My Aptiva 214482P (with Windows 3.1) failed to boot; it would stall at the opening “MS 3.1 screen.” But I was still able to get to all my TXT files by booting with a DOS 2.0 diskette in the A-drive and then doing a A:>C command.

But now even that does not work. Now the pc hangs up as soon as the memory test is completed, at which point it issues the error message “ 178 System-security error –VPD not available.”

Q1: What is error 178; what does it mean? What is the VPD?
Q2: Any suggestions for fixing it? – I plan to scrap the pc but would first like to copy some of the text fles and erase the rest.

I would greatly appreciate any advice. …. wdc

i dount know if this will work but have you tried to boot the computer with the windows 3.1 boot disk? you neaver know i might work

Martyn.S

Wdc:

You could remove the hard drive, place it in a working system and then copy off the files you need.