I am trying to help a friend who's computer has crashed. She is running Win 98SE and the computer will not run in either normal or safe mode. The error message says "Windows Protection Error. You must restart your computer." I have run full scandisk on the harddrive and there are no errors. I have tried several of the things I found by searching this board. I have convinced her to upgrade to WinXP. The computer is less than a year old so it can certainly handle it. My question is she needs to save files that are on the hard drive. Since I can't get windows to run, can I remove the hard drive and put it in a different computer as a slave drive and be able to read it? And can that computer be running WinXP Pro? Thanks, Chris

Hi, Yes, you can put the drive as a slave. XP Professional will see the files just fine. Just remember to move the jumper on the back of the hard drive to the slave position.As far as the windows protection error, that usually occurs when a driver or software is loaded that isn't compatible with your hardware. Has she recently installed anything? If so, that's probally the cause. Good Luck, ~winipcfg

She is using a DOS based federal finacial aid program on the computer. She has a lot of trouble using that program. Part of the problem, I believe, is that she is not exiting the program from the file command. She is just killing the MS-DOS window. She has been getting errors that the program is trying to save different files in the same place. The software provider recommends Win2K or XP Pro so that's what I am doing. Thanks, Chris

She might be VERY disappointed if the MS-DOS program won't run under XP. There are an awful lot of DOS programs that won't. Win2000 Pro might be a better choice for her since it offers more MS-DOS program support than XP. Don