I’m almost sure I haven’t crammed popcorn into my Hard Drive. So, why do I freeze up, and get an Error Message that says, “Kernel Error”.
The only way out is to reboot. Fine, but - WHAT DOES IT MEAN? <whimper>. For those of you so delightfully conversant on the “Illegal Function” posting, I beg of you- what does it mean?
With hat, and floppy in hand <smirk> I remain your humbled reader,
Cartooniverse
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
The kernel is the most important part of your operating system. It is the lowest level of software that everything else runs on top of.
Depending on the system, the kernel may handle things like communicating with devices, file mangagement, basic security, etc.
A good definition of the kernel is that it is the part of your O/S that must be running all of the time. It is the software that is required for everything else to work.
Does this mean that the Kernel resides on the BIOS chip??? And, if so, if it’s going south, can’t I replace just the BIOS chip off of the motherboard? or, are they affixed permanently these days? Keep those cards and letters coming, I do appreciate the help !!!
Cartooniverse
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
Cartooniverse:
Right, bios is the prom code - different than the kernel. The kernel is the operating system part - 95/NT itself as opposed to Netscape or utilities.
A kernel error is not good. What have you done different over the last few days - anything like hardware or software install etc.?
What happens? Did it happen once, all the time and what is the full text off the screen? Where in the boot happens or where are you when it happens?
What happens? Did it happen once or is it happening all the time? What is the full text off the screen? If it happens while booting where are you when it happens or what are you when it happens etc.?
And which OS in particular are you using? It might help to identify your problem if you were a bit less vague. 
The bios contains the code to get the computer to the point of reading a formated media. It then loads the operating system’s kernal from the formatted media. The kernal takes over from there and loads the rest of the operating system’s components and interfaces.
This might help you, but you do it at your own risk. I don’t see a reason for it not to work, but you never know till you do it.
BACKUP ANYTHING YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE NOW!
At least use scandisk on the hard drive. Set it for thorough to check the drive media’s surface integrity.
Your FAT table could be screwed up. Scandisk would normally fix that. When you fix a FAT table you can lose some or all of your files.
The drive could just have become corrupted where the kernal is.
You can boot from your Windows boot diskette and type in SYS A: C: and press enter.This will reload the system files from the floppy to the C drive.
IF YOU USE A DRIVE PROGRAM LIKE EZ-BIOS OR OTHER BE SURE TO WAIT FOR THE BOOT FROM FLOPPY CHOICE TO COME UP, AND CHOOSE THAT. THEN INSERT THE WINDOWS BOOT DISKETTE.
Try the trial version of Partion Magic. http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/index.html
The geometry of your disk could be different from what you originaly were accessing the drive with, if anything was changed in your bios hard drive interface. Example, you turned off or on LBA mode. The drive is readable in some spots, but goes out to lunch in other spots.
Cartooniverse ponders:
Well, it means the kernel made an error.
You haven’t specified which operating system you’re using, so I’ll just give a general purpose answer.
The kernel is basically code that runs in protected mode, as opposed to real mode. It provides services used by applications. “What’s protected mode?”, you ask?
Protected mode is a mode of operation in which the CPU (depending on the specific architecture in question) has full priviledges. It can address memory without regard to paging restrictions, it can often use opcodes forbidden to userspace programs, and so on. Since the kernel has to do things that userspace programs are not allowed to do, it needs to run in this mode. Some things that userspace programs are not permitted to do, the kernel is allowed to do, but at the same time, some operations are illegal even for the kernel.
Depending on the details of the OS you’re using, things like device drivers and so on may also run in protected mode, and be considered part of the kernel, and may generate such a message.
So that’s what the kernel is. It’s the stuff which manages task scheduling, paging and segmentation, and so on. If something goes wrong, usually due to a bug in the kernel itself, you’ll see such a message. Usually OS developers take great pains to remove all such problems from the kernel, but sometimes some may slip through, and sometimes also 3rd party protected mode device drivers can result in such errors over which the OS developers have no control.
That help any?
–
peas on earth
What computer, what operating system & what is the real message. I don’t think you gave us the real message, it should specificially say Kernel32.dll
In that case, what operating system, what is the date & size of that file & how many copies of that file do you have???