A discharge lamp lighting apparatus has a problem that a microcomputer within the apparatus falls down into malfunction due to noises generated in an inside thereof. With such the structure of the discharge lamp lighting apparatus that an operation of a calculation processing circuit, which is built up with the microcomputer, etc., is stopped through stopping the supply of electric power to the calculation processing circuit or bringing it into a sleep mode, it is possible to protecting it from the malfunction, during a time period when high voltage is generated just after starting of lighting of the discharge lamp. Also, with applying a protection processing by means of the calculation processing circuit and also applying an analog protection circuit, in common with, thereby it is possible to ensure reliability thereof further.