Hi, My Toshiba laptop is running Windows ME and it's having problem during start up. After I turn on/restart, the WinME logo will show up for a while and then I'd get a message "Please Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart your computer" and I couldn't do anything else but restart and ran into the same message again. This kept repeating until I had to do a step-by-step confirmation and answered "NO" to "Process start up command file (AUTOEXEC.BAT)?" and "YES" to everything else, after that the system started OK. It seems that somehow Windows ran into some problem when trying to load autoexec.bat and decided to ask me to restart the computer every time it loads the file. The computer boots OK in safe mode and I've tried to boot with WinME startup disk and did the "sys c:" command, but it didn't do anything helpful. I've also tried to do a system restore but It would stop at around 50% and reboot and would run into the same problem again. Any suggestions? Thanks, Kominator

This is what i would do until a tech responds. Scan disk, defrag, virus scan, disable uneccesary items from start up. Go here Linkage and look under guides /reference for links to info about what items should be starting up in msconfig/startup tab. You can run scandisk and defrag in safe mode if you cant get back into windows. If you dont have antivirus go back to the linkage page and choose an online virus scanner. Since system restore isnt working.. you might need the system restore patch. Worry about this after you solve the startup error.

hi, why not just disable autoexec.bat by renaming example: c:\>ren autoexec.bat autoexec.old else, you can edit autoexec.bat and remark each line by line to find the cause.

hello you could allso recopy windoz over its self from the a:c: \windows\options\cabs\setup click enter. heres a few other things http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/30687.html

I have tried to rename, delete, REM out all the lines of autoexec.bat, but every time I restart, there will always be a new version of autoexec.bat generated automatically by WinME and I would run into the same problem all over again. It seems like I have two options: 1) try to get System Restore to work; or 2) copy/install WinME over itself. Of course there is always a third option: reformat and reinstall everything (I may still have Toshiba recovery CD somewhere). Or better yet, upgrade to Windows XP :-) Thank you for all the suggestions, I really appreciated them. Kominator

newgrl’s solution from a previous post: Boot with an ME bootdisk. From the a:\> prompt type each of these commands and press enter after each one: c: attrib -h -s autoexec.bat ren autoexec.bat autoexec.bad edit autoexec.bat You are looking at a DOS editor application (like notepad for DOS). Now... save the blank one. To do this: Alt + F S Alt + F X Type: attrib +s autoexec.bat Now... pull out the bootdisk and reboot. It should use the blank autoexec.bat and you should be able to get up. You can open the autoexec.bad file in notepad to take a look at what is in there.