Win98 Protection Error.. ALWAYS!

[gradius]

I wiped my 1GB hard drive, and did a clean install of Win98. Everything seems fine except that when I power up my system, Windows always says: "Windows Protection Error, need to restart computer..". Ever since I upgraded to Win98, I can NEVER boot into Win98 on the first try. After I restart, it either gives me the same error, or boots up fine.

What is the problem?

[Bleeding Edge]

Are you using an anti-virus program that checks the floppy drive? This may be of help, directly or indirectly: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q186/3/51.asp?FR=0

Try Nathan's too http://www.helponthe.net/nathan/#ima2b

[gradius]

i thought it might be something like that, so I disabled the on-chip anti-virus protection that was built into the motherboard, but with no success.

[Bonehead]

It could also be that the cpu is running a little too hot. Than your sytem/windows becoms unstable. Have you overclocked that sucker?

[Jin Vitas]

What else did the windows protection error say? Like an IOS.. error.. can you get into safe mode? without the error?

[gradius]

OK, no answer everyone's question at once. No, it is not overclocked, and the CPU rarely gets over 40C.
In the process of rebooting a hundred times, Windows 98 will bring up it's "Windows did not start up properly" menu, where I can select to boot into Safe Mode or Normal. %50 of the time when I choose normal, it'll boot up fine, but the other half of the time it'll give me a windows protection error. Some of the errors say something like "Please enter path of valid COMMAND.COM" , "Can't initialize CONFIGMS.. windows protection error, please reboot" and others.
Like I said before, the problem is really odd, because if I were to reboot my computer now, Windows would boot up fine, but if I turn off my computer and try to boot up, I'll get all those errors again.
?

[Bleeding Edge]

This may not be of any help, but while your waiting for someone to come up with the fix, give it a try. http://support.microsoft.com/support/windows/tshoot/startup98/?PR=W95&T1=7d&FR=0&A=T&T=T&S=F&

[Helly Hansen]

Hey Guy,
We have the proper solution for you! It is listed under out Tech support page on our website - www.gowiththebest.com sorry I don't have time to explain now! It's under PC Troubleshooting & System Errors

Good Luck!

[gradius]

Wow, thanks everyone for helping. Windows 98 boots up wonderfully now. ( You know that a local computer repair store was going to charge me $50.00, just to look at it! )

Thanks a million!

[jadinolf]

Great gradius, but fill us in on what you did to correct it.

[gradius]

Sorry.

Well, I changed my RAM's timing in BIOS from 10ns to 8ns, uninstalled a DOS communications software that loaded in my AUTOEXEC.BAT, ran SCANDISK on my second hard drive and found over 200MB in lost files, deleted those files, and I changed my swap file to a fixed 120MB. Now, I'm not sure which one fixed the problem ( probably the first two ) but after I did these things, I haven't had a problem booting up yet.