German Boot Message

When do you get the message? When your computer first starts up or after the Bios routine right before initializing the operating system? It sort of sounds like a Bios or Video Bios initialization message. Your motherboard and or Bios might have been manufactured in Germany.

Mike

The initial message is referring to "Illegal token" in a Windows NT3.51 operating system

My first suspicion (especially if you are not running the GERMAN version of Windows) is that you've got a virus of some kind.  Do you have a virus scanner and floppy disk boot (with write protect on) available?

jhance- I have checked it with a new virus scan from both Nortons and Mcafee.
clancyo- I am not running win Nt on these system.
Mikecr - it happens right after the bios read and as it begins to read command.com
cmcgee - my suspicions as well but why would it come up in german?

If it's happening as the Bios turns control over to the operating system, and cmcgee is correct, then you have a German made Bios or Motherboard. What type of hard drive do you have? Is it SCSI? You may have a SCSI hard drive attached to a SCSI Card that is German. When the Bios turns control to the operating system, it will turn it over to the SCSI Bios built into the card and initiate the hard drive bootup sequence and this may be where your getting it from. Just a thought.

Mike

Well, the most properple cause, is that you computer can't boot from you disk, because some program crashed or you were powering off your computer, while it was writing to your disk. The first thing you should try, is to boot on a boot disk, and try checking if you can see your harddrive. If you can, just SYS your harddrive (By typing "SYS A: C:", with your boot disk inserted in drive A:).

If the problem is that you can't see your hard disk, then check you CMOS setup, to confirm that the BIOS has found all of your hard disks. Most motherboards are able to autodetect hard disks, by selecting "IDE Autodection" (I don't know what that's called in German).
If no harddisks are found in the CMOS setup, your hard disk properbly isn't connected correctly (Open your computer and check that all of the cables are connected properly).

The final possibility is that you "Accidently" removed you hard disk partition. If you have done that, you won't be able to see your hard disk, when booting from a boot disk, but you will be able to see it if you start your "FDISK.EXE" program (Be CAREFULL with that. This program is able to remove all data from your hard disk).

Have I overlooked any options ?
Yeah, I haven't covered the SCSI part yet, but I think that you should first try out all of this stuff...

Actually, I'd like to know WHEN your error first occured.