G
Guest
I tried to be as breif as possible, but like it or lump it, this is
paractuically a novel...
Last week, I was having problems moving/deleting .AVI files on my computer.
I googled the problem, and the solution was simple enough, remove a single
registry entry. So I did, nothing I haven't done a dozen times before...
Friday night, I went to use these .AVI files, and Media player wouldn't play
them, but it worked fine before I modified the registry... I ran the AVIs
thru GSpot Codec tool, and some of them came back with corrupt headers, but
they ALL played fine in WMP a few days previously.
So I said to myself, "Self, use System Restore". I opened system restore,
selected a system checkpoint from 1 week previous. I restored the computer,
and found the problem was still uncorrected, and a few of my files had been
moved around and/or renamed and/or copied. I didn't like this, so I reverted
back to the pre-restored state, figgering the files that had been
moved/renamed/copied would be undone. I then selected a different restore
point, and rinse, lather, repeat... After about 4 restores, my Systray
flashed a message saying I was dangerously low on hard drive space. I
checked it out and I was sitting at approximately 180mb remaining, and when I
started an hour previous to that, I had about 2.1gb free. I decided to do
another revert. This is when the proverbial excrement hit the air
circulation device...
The last revert seemed to progress normally for the shutdown. When the
sytem restarted however, after I logged in, I got a message saying I was
missing browseui.dll and explorer.exe could not open. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del,
and got a similar message for taskman.exe and vdmdbg.dll. I rebooted the
machine and opted for safe mode, same results. I rebooted again into safe
mode command prompt. (my memories of DOS commands have served me well...)
From there I was able to find copies of those files in the SP2 update package
stored in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\download\<insert alpha-numeric
gobbledeygook here>\. I had previously installed SP2 and found it slowed the
performance of my computer, and had uninstalled it. There was another
similar update in the download folder (also named with numbers and letters).
I think it was a major KB update or it might have been SP1, b/c it was almost
as big as the SP2 update. Once I copied those two files from the SP2 Update,
I typed explorer, and got a slightly different message, having to do with a
different dll file. iexplore.exe didn't work because shdocvw.dll was
missing. I tried Taskman again, and it came up. From there, I decided the
most prudent course of action was to run an update, to restore all of the
dlls, as they had obviously been adversely affected somehow. So, from
taskman, I opened the run box, browsed to the non-SP2 update in
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\download\, and ran it. It seemed to go ok.
Until it restarted... Then the excrement hit the air circulation device
again....
At this point, the computer would display the XP pro startup screen, but
before the log in screen would normally come up, there was a flash of a Blue
Screen of Death, and the computer restarted. It came up saying windows
hadn't started correctly (duh) and prompted me for various safe modes, last
known good configuration, or start windows normally. All produced the exact
same result; blue screen of death and restart.
I did not make an ASR disk, and I didn't install the recovery console.
However, I was able to get a DOS command prompt using my old WinME startup
disk. (Amazingly enough, the entire file structure is intact, and AFAIK, so
is the registry, b/c I could open regedit from taskman previously, and no
errors came up.) From there, I manually copied all of the files from the SP2
update to C:\Windows\System32, and restarted the computer. This brought me
back to where I was before; I could start the computer in safe mode - command
prompt, and taskman was ok, but explorer.exe wasn't working, etc. From
there, I tried running the SP2 update. Again, the update seemed to run
normally. Upon restart, the blue screen of death came back. I found a KB
article regarding the BSoD/Restart loop, and it suggested extracting
kernel32.dl_ from my WinXP Pro disc. However, my friend took it with him
when he moved to Calgary. I borrowed my Dad's XP Pro Upgrade disc, and
extracted the file from there (using the ME Startup disk DOS prompt),
however, this did not correct the problem either. I haven't tried anything
else at this point, as I am pretty much out of ideas....
The machine specs:
Athlon T-Bird 1.3Ghz on Soyo K7VTA-Pro mainboard
Win XP Pro SP1 with all latest updates except SP2 (When it last worked,
anyway)
256mb Ram
NVidia GeForce2 MX 64mb
paractuically a novel...
Last week, I was having problems moving/deleting .AVI files on my computer.
I googled the problem, and the solution was simple enough, remove a single
registry entry. So I did, nothing I haven't done a dozen times before...
Friday night, I went to use these .AVI files, and Media player wouldn't play
them, but it worked fine before I modified the registry... I ran the AVIs
thru GSpot Codec tool, and some of them came back with corrupt headers, but
they ALL played fine in WMP a few days previously.
So I said to myself, "Self, use System Restore". I opened system restore,
selected a system checkpoint from 1 week previous. I restored the computer,
and found the problem was still uncorrected, and a few of my files had been
moved around and/or renamed and/or copied. I didn't like this, so I reverted
back to the pre-restored state, figgering the files that had been
moved/renamed/copied would be undone. I then selected a different restore
point, and rinse, lather, repeat... After about 4 restores, my Systray
flashed a message saying I was dangerously low on hard drive space. I
checked it out and I was sitting at approximately 180mb remaining, and when I
started an hour previous to that, I had about 2.1gb free. I decided to do
another revert. This is when the proverbial excrement hit the air
circulation device...
The last revert seemed to progress normally for the shutdown. When the
sytem restarted however, after I logged in, I got a message saying I was
missing browseui.dll and explorer.exe could not open. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del,
and got a similar message for taskman.exe and vdmdbg.dll. I rebooted the
machine and opted for safe mode, same results. I rebooted again into safe
mode command prompt. (my memories of DOS commands have served me well...)
From there I was able to find copies of those files in the SP2 update package
stored in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\download\<insert alpha-numeric
gobbledeygook here>\. I had previously installed SP2 and found it slowed the
performance of my computer, and had uninstalled it. There was another
similar update in the download folder (also named with numbers and letters).
I think it was a major KB update or it might have been SP1, b/c it was almost
as big as the SP2 update. Once I copied those two files from the SP2 Update,
I typed explorer, and got a slightly different message, having to do with a
different dll file. iexplore.exe didn't work because shdocvw.dll was
missing. I tried Taskman again, and it came up. From there, I decided the
most prudent course of action was to run an update, to restore all of the
dlls, as they had obviously been adversely affected somehow. So, from
taskman, I opened the run box, browsed to the non-SP2 update in
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\download\, and ran it. It seemed to go ok.
Until it restarted... Then the excrement hit the air circulation device
again....
At this point, the computer would display the XP pro startup screen, but
before the log in screen would normally come up, there was a flash of a Blue
Screen of Death, and the computer restarted. It came up saying windows
hadn't started correctly (duh) and prompted me for various safe modes, last
known good configuration, or start windows normally. All produced the exact
same result; blue screen of death and restart.
I did not make an ASR disk, and I didn't install the recovery console.
However, I was able to get a DOS command prompt using my old WinME startup
disk. (Amazingly enough, the entire file structure is intact, and AFAIK, so
is the registry, b/c I could open regedit from taskman previously, and no
errors came up.) From there, I manually copied all of the files from the SP2
update to C:\Windows\System32, and restarted the computer. This brought me
back to where I was before; I could start the computer in safe mode - command
prompt, and taskman was ok, but explorer.exe wasn't working, etc. From
there, I tried running the SP2 update. Again, the update seemed to run
normally. Upon restart, the blue screen of death came back. I found a KB
article regarding the BSoD/Restart loop, and it suggested extracting
kernel32.dl_ from my WinXP Pro disc. However, my friend took it with him
when he moved to Calgary. I borrowed my Dad's XP Pro Upgrade disc, and
extracted the file from there (using the ME Startup disk DOS prompt),
however, this did not correct the problem either. I haven't tried anything
else at this point, as I am pretty much out of ideas....
The machine specs:
Athlon T-Bird 1.3Ghz on Soyo K7VTA-Pro mainboard
Win XP Pro SP1 with all latest updates except SP2 (When it last worked,
anyway)
256mb Ram
NVidia GeForce2 MX 64mb