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Windows protection error after fitting second hard drive
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Posted by: davolente
I have an ancient PB Pulsar 16, upgraded from WIN95 to 98, 128mb of RAM and a slooooow 233mhz processor. It may be old, but, with carefull management, acceleration and "cleaning" programs, and keeping on top of things, it`s actually running quite well. As a last ditch attempt to eke out a bit more use before I get a new one and semi-retire it as a second machine, I thought I`d add a second hard drive to supplement the measly 2gb original disc in the form of a 4.2gb Maxtor (same make as the original) removed from another old machine that I believed to be good. I don`t need acres and acres of space, as I store all of my important stuff off the PC and on CDROM. I`ve previously installed a CD re-writer, with no problems, so I though it would be a piece of cake! I fitted it, as per, every piece of instruction I`ve ever read on the subject, with the old one as the master and the "new" one as the slave, with the jumpers correct. The BIOS recognises everything on boot-up, and Windows starts to load, but stalls a fair way into the process with a "Windows protection error" notice, telling me to push any key to continue and that I must re-start the PC. No other clues. I`ve tried a step-by-step start-up and it seems to throw up the message when I try and load "arkdoshk.vxd", which I think is a Windows System driver (according to the search I did). It`s a hidden item in the SYSTEM folder. It also turns up in SYS INI as "device=arkdoshk.vxd". I`ve no idea what it does. HOWEVER, even if I say "no" to loading that on step-by-step booting, there`s a hesitation and I still get the error. (am I barking up the correct tree here?) The other odd thing is that with the second drive attached, I can`t even boot into safe made. If I select that from the options; after the memory check, all I get is a blank screen with the cursor flashing top left. (I don`t like using safe mode, anyway, as when I go back to normal, a lot of my desk-top icons have been moved all over the place! That, presumably, is another story!) I have also deleted and re-formatted the "new" drive from a boot floppy. Needless to say, with just the original drive on, everything is back to normal, (apart from the usual odd Windows` glitches, of course!) Can anybody help?
Posted by: Andrew7689
Hello
Yes you are right to say that it was a driver file, here is what to do.
Load your computer into dos either by selecting command prompt or using a floppy boot disk.
Type at the dos prompt "edit" then a dos program comes up with blue screen, go to file menu and open then look for a file in the windows directory called system.ini, open the file into the edit program
Then look for the following line in the document
device=arkdoshk.vxd
after finding this line remove the line, then save it back to the hard disk, then try and run windows as normal, this should solve the problem.
Regards
Andrew
Posted by: Workdawg
if you had the case open, it would have been possible to unseat the ram. i know that i did that once. and when i did, i got a windows protection error. Try reseating the ram before you go through the trouble of digging around in dos trying to diable the file.
Posted by: davolente
Thanks for suggestions, but the problem was solved by using Maxtor`s own boot-disc facility called MaxBlast. Well worth a check, if you ever have two Maxtor drives to set up. It`s a gem to use. Loded with more utilities and drive info than you can shake a stick at. Download it onto a floppy from their site. I think there was obviously something odd about whatever might have been on that second-hand drive, despite repeated attempts to format. The arkdoshk.vxd file appeared to be a red herring, as it just happens to be the last item loaded before the desktop rustles up, as I found out on a "normal" (i.e. WITHOUT the second drive) step-by-step boot-up. regards....Dave
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