After the first installtion has occured in ME and it restarts to make the final hardware settings I get an error after the ME Logo screen saying "Windows Protection Error Please Restart Computer System Halted." Then i tried to restart normally and in safe mode i get the same problem both ways. Ive tried installing ME with the /p I switch didnt make a difference Also i am dual booting Windows 2000 and I wanted ME. My System Config is P II 233 MMX 96 EDO RAM Sound Blaster (Dont remember which one) 3com 10MBPS Ethernet CArd SCSI Interface Card External DSL Modem (Zyxel) Voodoo 2 1000 PCI SIS 5598 Graphics Card I installed the DSL modem, Network Card and the SCSI card later but i was having this problem from before. Id Like help really from any one that knows whats wrong THANKS

I noticed that I got the same sort of thing happening when I first installed Windows ME, although not exactly in the same way. My PC kept getting Windows protection errors just after the part where it creates a boot disk during installation. I also had a problem for a long time (which I've only just resolved) where I would get a protection error when shutting down or restarting. Apparently, after doing a bit of research, I discovered that the most likely cause of this is when Windows fails to load or unload a virtual device driver (VXD). Also, this can happen upon boot up aswell, although it never happened to me. I eventually tracked the problem down to a conflict between my video card and sound card. Even though I never had any problems with either the video card or sound card when running Windows ME, the protection error still occured. Now I have a new video card and sound card and don't have the problem any more. I'd suggest installing Windows ME again from scratch, but with the minimum hardware installtion. Put in only the video card and no other cards at all and disconnect any other devices, such as extra hard drives, CD-ROMs etc etc and see what how the installation goes after that. If the installation goes well, add the extra hardware one item at a time, to see if you can isolate it to one item. For example, add the soundcard and see how it goes - if it goes OK, then add something else. If you find that you get a protection error occuring after installing a specific item of hardware, make sure you can isolate the problem to that bit of hardware by removing any other non-essential hardware and reinstalling. For example, again, if you get a good installtion on minimal hardware and then add the sound card and all is OK and then add the modem and all is OK and then add a network card and encounter problems, remove the sound card and modem and reinstall again with just the minimum hardware and the network card and see if the same problem happens again. This will help you figure out whether it is a problem with that specific hardware item or if it is a conflict with that hardware item and another item. I'd also suggest, before adding new hardware, after getting a good installation from a minimal hardware setup, to install the drivers before physically putting the piece of hardware in your machine or connecting it to your machine. This will reduce the chance of Windows ME not correctly finding the hardware or choosing the wrong driver. I'm not sure if this will help, but it might be worth giving it a shot. I can't be bothered to list my hardware setup at the moment, but I will mention that, with exactly the same setup, I had no problems with Win98 or Win98SE and these problems only started happening with Windows ME. If you are going to go for a dual-boot system involving Win2k + Win-Something else, I'd suggest sticking with Win2k and Win98SE, unless you have a very specific reason to use Win ME.

If you have both a sound card and on-board sound, be sure to disable the on-board sound through the CMOS settings and remove its drivers to eliminate conflicts there.

How do you disable the on board sound from the CMOS and remove drivers??? I didnt know you could do something like that but the driver you are talking about woundnt they be installed in ME so i would have to disable the on board sound a reinstall Me??? Or do i just diaable?

I've experienced a similar problem. The solution that worked for me was to delete contents in the hidden "_RESTORE" directory. I've bootup with a dos floppy and use the old Norton Commander to do this. Hope this will help.