Can bad SellIconCache do this?

[Julie]

This Windows 2000 Professional machine would not boot up.
Instead, it would stop on the BSOD with stop code C0000145
(Application error) Application failed to initialize properly 0xC0000006

Trying to boot into safe mode produced the same result.

Using the CD, I went into the recovery console and looked for new files, such as
Windows Updates or whatever. One of the few files I found that had a current
timestamp was ShellIconCache. So as an experiment I renamed the file and rebooted.
Sure enough, that seems to have fixed it. I rebooted several times just to be
sure, and it seems to be fine now.

But I can't think of a reason why a bad ShellIconCache would have produced
this BSOD error. Can anyone offer an explanation?

Thanks.

 

[George Hester]

It didn't. What a BSOD is is a memory dump. My understanding is that the shelliconcachefile is a library of sorts. Nothing executable in it. The dump occrus because something was accessed that shouln't have been or something that was supposed to be accessed was non existant.

This really covers most of a BSOD. It is a driver issue a dll issuse something with executable code. As soon as your system booted you had the shelliconcachefile avalable. Cannot get to a desktop with it.

I'm glad your issue stop it could be a call that was only accessed once due to installation issues or some other call you were unaware of didn't succeed and is dormant.

 

[aD]

This Windows 2000 Professional machine would not boot up.
Instead, it would stop on the BSOD with stop code C0000145
(Application error) Application failed to initialize properly 0xC0000006

Trying to boot into safe mode produced the same result.

Using the CD, I went into the recovery console and looked for new files, such as
Windows Updates or whatever. One of the few files I found that had a current
timestamp was ShellIconCache. So as an experiment I renamed the file and rebooted.
Sure enough, that seems to have fixed it. I rebooted several times just to be
sure, and it seems to be fine now.

But I can't think of a reason why a bad ShellIconCache would have produced
this BSOD error. Can anyone offer an explanation?

Thanks.

Well I couldn't find much about it on Microsoft's KB, but maybe it was
trying to initialise explorer.exe and it in turn tried to read the
ShellIconCache which then died due to it being corrupted.

Maybe the file was cross-linked or corrupted somehow that caused a
boot-up process to fall over trying to read the file.

If that's all you changed which then fixed the problem, I'd say it
probably was ShellIconCache.

If you have a backup copy of the broken ShellIconCache I'd be interested
in testing it to see if it did cause the problem. Always nice to learn
something new and useful

aD