Crashes with obscure messages

T

Terry Pinnell

Recently my PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, XP Pro SP2) has been
suddenly locking up. I often get a message
"The application or DLL
C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please
check against your installation diskette."

BTW, the last sentence seems to date the message as written decades ago!

Can anyone shed any light on this please? And what I should do about it?

FWIW, I found another copy of AcGenral.dll and it was identical.

Also, I usually get another message when trying to display the Task
Manager, so that I can re-boot:
"Taskmgr.exe - Application Error
The application failed to initiate properly (0xc000012d)"

Not sure if this is a related or consequential issue, but it forces me to
power down or use the reset button.
 
D

Don Phillipson

Recently my PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, XP Pro SP2) has been
suddenly locking up. I often get a message
"The application or DLL
C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please
check against your installation diskette."
BTW, the last sentence seems to date the message as written decades ago!

Can anyone shed any light on this please? And what I should do about it?

FWIW, I found another copy of AcGenral.dll and it was identical.

Also, I usually get another message when trying to display the Task
Manager, so that I can re-boot:
"Taskmgr.exe - Application Error
The application failed to initiate properly (0xc000012d)"

Not sure if this is a related or consequential issue, but it forces me to
power down or use the reset button.
Click to expand...

Problem #2 might be cured by installing SP3. My TASKMGR.EXE
is 135,680 bytes, dated 4/14/2008.

Problem #1 may be that ACGENRAL antedates WinXP by "decades."
This is what WinXP "Compatibility" arrangements are for. Start / Help
presents the basic information. These old apps can be configured
to run as if under Win95 or Win98 (and perhaps Win3.1). One of
these configurations may make the app run as you want.

But it would be prudent first to instal SP3.
 
T

Tecknomage

Recently my PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, XP Pro SP2) has been
suddenly locking up. I often get a message
"The application or DLL
C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please
check against your installation diskette."

BTW, the last sentence seems to date the message as written decades ago!

Can anyone shed any light on this please? And what I should do about it?

FWIW, I found another copy of AcGenral.dll and it was identical.

Also, I usually get another message when trying to display the Task
Manager, so that I can re-boot:
"Taskmgr.exe - Application Error
The application failed to initiate properly (0xc000012d)"

Not sure if this is a related or consequential issue, but it forces me to
power down or use the reset button.
Click to expand...

CAUTION: A reply suggest you update to SP3
If you do this, your WinXP Pro SP2 Setup CD cannot be used to run the
Repair Console. You will be asked to mount the WinXP Pro SP3 CD which
you do not have.

If you do want to update to SP3, and you have a CD Recorder, download
the ISO installer. You write the ISO to a CD, mount this CD from your
desktop and it runs the SP3 Installer just like any other app install
CD.

SP3 ISO here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ce-b5fb-4488-8c50-fe22559d164e&displaylang=en

NOTE - I use a text eMail client and the above link may word-wrap, is
should be a single line.



***** AS TO YOUR ERROR, troubleshooting *****

HIGHLY suggest you download Microsoft's Process Explorer (PE)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

NOTE - What you download is a ZIP file that contains the entire
utility, NOT an installer. UnZIP and place in a folder of your choice
(like C:\Program Files\Process Explorer) then create a shortcut to run
it.

Just look at the screenshot and description on the MS page and you can
see it's a much better Task Manager.

It does NOT replace the Windows Task Manager, just provides enhanced
features like showing exactly which task is loading your system.

The biggest gain is Process Explorer's search. You know, those error
dialogs that popup saying "such-&-such DLL has caused an error and
....." Well using search in PE, with the error dialog open, it will
show you what task called that DLL so you have useful information.

Now using PE you have a better method of seeing exactly what is
hogging your system. Especially if you enable the following:

Options
Hide When Minimized
Allow Only One Instance
Confirm Kill (default)
CPU History Tray Icon

View menu, check Show Lower Pane

View, Select columns, Process Performance tab, select only...
CPU History (graph)
Threads
Handle Count

Also use Save Column Set, which saves your choices AND dialog
position/size.


Suggest you place a PE shortcut in your Startup folder (run minimized
option) so it starts at boot.

**** NOW - When you get the error dialog again, LEAVE THE ERROR DIALOG
OPEN, then click PE icon your Taskbar Tray to open and use the PE
search for [AcGenral.DLL] and find out exactly which task called it
and caused the error.




"AcGenral.DLL file information

The process Windows Compatibility DLL belongs to the software
Microsoft Windows Operating System by Microsoft Corporation.

Description: File AcGenral.DLL is located in a subfolder of
C:\Windows. Known file sizes on Windows XP are 1,852,928 bytes (42% of
all occurrence), 1,852,416 bytes, 2,154,496 bytes, 2,144,256
bytes.http://www.file.net/process/acgenral.dll.html
A .dll file (Dynamic Link Library) is a special type of Windows
program containing functions that other programs can call. This .dll
file can be injected to all running processes and can change or
manipulate their behavior. The program has no visible window. The
service has no detailed description. It can change the behavior of
other programs or manipulate other programs. The file is not a Windows
system file. AcGenral.DLL is a trustworthy file from Microsoft."

See...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886716/en-us
....in case this is your problem.
 
H

Hot-Text

Where is your Info link to the Microsoft WinXP Pro SP3 CD ISO installer
at, Mr. Tecknomage.
 
J

Jim

Recently my PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, XP Pro SP2) has been
suddenly locking up. I often get a message
"The application or DLL
C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please
check against your installation diskette."

BTW, the last sentence seems to date the message as written decades ago!

Can anyone shed any light on this please? And what I should do about it?

FWIW, I found another copy of AcGenral.dll and it was identical.

Also, I usually get another message when trying to display the Task
Manager, so that I can re-boot:
"Taskmgr.exe - Application Error
The application failed to initiate properly (0xc000012d)"

Not sure if this is a related or consequential issue, but it forces me to
power down or use the reset button.
Click to expand...


A .dll is not an image .
 
P

Paul

Don said:
Problem #2 might be cured by installing SP3. My TASKMGR.EXE
is 135,680 bytes, dated 4/14/2008.

Problem #1 may be that ACGENRAL antedates WinXP by "decades."
This is what WinXP "Compatibility" arrangements are for. Start / Help
presents the basic information. These old apps can be configured
to run as if under Win95 or Win98 (and perhaps Win3.1). One of
these configurations may make the app run as you want.

But it would be prudent first to instal SP3.
Click to expand...

A critical detail missing from Terry's description, is whether at
the time of the Acgenral error, an attempt was being made to launch a
brand new executable.

If some executable was being corrupted when read off disk, and Windows
responded by believing that the application needed compatibility
support, perhaps at that point, it tries to load Acgenral from disk.
And if Acgenral suffered the same kind of header corruption, then the
error results. (Pretty strange, if it happened that way.)

If no new programs are being launched, at that point in time when
the error is being reported, that would be more suspicious.

There is an article here, with a list of files near the bottom, that
shows what files handle application compatibility. Whether they stay
loaded in RAM, or are loaded on demand, would be a good question.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319580

It's still very suspicious, and could either be some kind of
malware, or something like bad RAM or a bad disk or bad SATA cable.
Plenty of testing, remains to go.

Version 25.11 of Prime95 is available here, for both Windows
and Linux. If you boot a Linux LiveCD and run the Prime95 stress
test, and it passes, while running the Windows version is failing,
it could be more than a hardware problem. A clean Linux run, tells
you the hardware is fine. Prime95 is like running a memory test,
only with more stressful test conditions. It can only test memory
which the OS isn't currently using.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

And an offline virus scanner is available here. As long as a DHCP
capable networking solution is available when this CD boots, then it
can get up to date virus definitions to run a scan with. The
"drive letters" shown in the control panel of this application,
don't correspond to Windows drive letters. And then, you need to
use the Terminal application from the menu, navigate to the
individual disks, and sort out which partition is which in there.
Or, tick all the partitions as needing scanning, and head off to
bed while it completes. It takes about 2 hours to scan 40GB
of files on C:.

http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk10/

That tool is built on top of a Gentoo Linux distro.

On the jewel box my RescueDisk10 is in, I've written...

At boot
1) Press "e"
2) Wait for "configfile" line to appear. Don't change
anything. Press control-x to allow the boot process to continue.
3) Press "e" again.
4) The Linux boot command will be exposed.
Remove "quiet" from the end of the line.
Add "docache" to the end of the line.
Press control-x to continue the boot process, with the modified line.
5) The OS will now read the 200MB CDROM image into RAM.
The CD can then be unmounted from a Terminal window.
And only at that point, can the CD be popped out of the tray.
*Quickly* remove the CD, because the OS will close the tray
automatically in a matter of seconds, once the tray is open.
(I haven't pinched the CD yet, but it's bound to happen
one of these days.) The tray closing interval is variable.

The above procedure, is so the Kaspersky scanner can be run,
without leaving the CD spinning in the drive for hours on end.
"Docache" means the entire CD is stored in RAM.

The Kaspersky tool has the following side effects. It plays
with the pagefile (uses it for its own pagefile). This isn't
an issue. It's still a good idea to shutdown Windows completely,
before running a scan. The Kaspersky tool may also choose to store
the virus definitions on some partition on the computer as well,
which may help reduce the download time for virus definitions
at some future date. For some reason, it chose to store them on
my G: partition.

G:\Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10.0
5477 files, 51 folders, 129,077,914 bytes

HTH,
Paul
 
T

Terry Pinnell

Many thanks all, much appreciate your helpful advice.

Alias & others:
My delay in upgrading to SP3 is mainly because I had a bad experience when
doing so on my previous PC. Could well have been down to me, but
nevertheless I'm at present reluctant to take the risk again. If I could
find some foolproof way of doing a 100% restore in the event of serious
problems again, then that would be a different matter. But that's another
whole subject ;-)

Don:
My TASKMGR.EXE is identical to yours.

I've never looked at the topic of 'Windows compatibility' before. Not sure
how it's relevant, but then my knowhow on this is negligible. Is
Acgenral.dll only executed when an old and potentially incompatible
program is being run? If so, does that mean I must first identify what app
*causes* the crash? Which so far I haven't done. Or even established that
it is an 'application', rather than say hardware (e.g RAM, drivers etc) or
some obscure low level element of XP Pro, a service, process, whatever -
I'm out of my technical depth here. In any case, the error is *about*
Acgenral, not about any 'app' that Acgenral might be working on!


Paul:
Really generous of you to respond in such detail, thanks a bunch!

I can't be sure but I think I was indeed opening (or at least
re-activating) an application directly before the lock-up.

I studied that 8 year old MS KB article, but not sure I get anything from
it. My Acgenral.dll is 'created Feb 28th 2006', size 1,852,416 bytes. The
version listed in that article is obviously different, being 4 years
older.

I haven't tested RAM and so must do that soon if nothing more obvious
emerges. Likewise, cable connections, although that seems very unlikely;
occasional accidental knocks etc on the (floor-standing) PC case have
never generated this problem.

I did a CHKDSK C: /f recently. No bad sectors reported. (BTW, I had to go
to Event Viewer to find the log; isn't there a switch setting to
supplement or replace \f that reports everything conveniently as well as
fixing any repairable problems?)

I haven't done one on my second (identical) HD, I:, which I use mainly for
backup. Will do shortly.

I use Avira AntiVir, resident to guard and nightly to scan my OS HD, C:. I
have MW and occasionally run that too. I don't *think* this is a malware
issue.

I'm not into Linux!


Tecknomage:
This OEM (Mesh) PC came with a recovery CD, not a 'WinXP Pro SP2 Setup
CD', so if/when I *do* get to update to SP3, I'll adopt your neat
suggested method, thank you.

Great stuff about PE. I do have it (and ProcMon), although I'm no expert
on its efficient use, so it's really good news to find expertise about it
here. (BTW, I posted an identical message in the SysInternals forum
yesterday, but so far no replies.)

Focusing on PE, I set its options to those you recommended. (With one
exception - I've kept the familiar 'CPU' column, as that's about the only
one I understand! And it does give me something with which to compare in
XP TM.) I've saved the 'column set'. And added PE to Startup.

BTW, I note the Help says the PE tray icon should be green. Mine is black.
You can see it in this screenshot, which has the main purpose of showing
all here the fairly large number of programs/services I have running, and
to get your OK on the way I've setup PE's main display.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/PE-1.jpg

But I'm not sure how to proceed in using PE for the issue under
discussion. For a start, I just ran PE while composing this reply. Not
after any obvious problems like those I described. although quite a few
applications running and XP TM > Performance > PF Usage showing 1.25 GB.
(Note that it's been a day or two since I rebooted.) I used Find with
'acgenral' as target. These were the results displayed. Apart from
reminding me how inter-related and complex all this is (and how many
instances of svchost.exe are currently being run), I'm afraid it means
nothing to me!

Process Type Handle or DLL

rundll32.exe 444 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
services.exe 800 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
Isass.exe 812 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 1100 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 1148 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 1268 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 1352 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 1428 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
spoolsv.exe 1528 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 1732 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
explorer.exe 1980 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
netdde.exe 2156 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 3732 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
svchost.exe 3752 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL
alg.exe 3840 DLL C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.DLL

I note your advice about what to do when the error occurs again, but as
everything else was frozen I don't see how we can expect PE to run?

I don't have Adobe Premier, but it's interesting that I have been getting
crashes while running the latest version of my own video editor, Magix
MovieEdit Pro 17 Plus. However, I'm pretty sure that on the last occasion
the freeze occurred, MEP wasn't running.

BTW, my son just moved to San Diego to take up a job with QualComm. Looks
a great city!


Joe:
As mentioned above I do have Malwarebytes and run it occasionally to
supplement my nightly scans with Avira AntiVir (free).


Jim:
Indeed, that struck me too. What do you make of it?
 
A

Alias

Alias& others:
My delay in upgrading to SP3 is mainly because I had a bad experience when
doing so on my previous PC. Could well have been down to me, but
nevertheless I'm at present reluctant to take the risk again. If I could
find some foolproof way of doing a 100% restore in the event of serious
problems again, then that would be a different matter. But that's another
whole subject
Click to expand...

Clone the drive to another drive with the hard drive's utility available
for free on their web site. Use the CD to install SP3 and be sure to
reboot TWICE after installing SP3. Disable any real time AV or anti
malware apps before installing and you shouldn't have any problems. SP
3, IMHO, makes a big difference with XP.
 
T

Terry Pinnell

Alias said:
Clone the drive to another drive with the hard drive's utility available
for free on their web site. Use the CD to install SP3 and be sure to
reboot TWICE after installing SP3. Disable any real time AV or anti
malware apps before installing and you shouldn't have any problems. SP
3, IMHO, makes a big difference with XP.
Click to expand...

Thanks Alias. I'll browse the SAMSUNG site more thoroughly later, as I
didn't immediately see the utility you mention for my 2 x 750 GB Serial
ATA2 HDs (identical, 'SAMSUNG HD753LJ SCSI Disk Device' says Device Mgr).

But a more pressing query is that at the page referenced by Tecknomage

http://tinyurl.com/3xq4jy8
to get the 544.9 MB file
xpsp3_5512.080413 2113_usa_x86fre_spcd.ISO
I read this:
"DO NOT CLICK DOWNLOAD IF YOU ARE UPDATING JUST ONE COMPUTER: A smaller,
more appropriate download for individual users is now available on Windows
Update."

But doing that would not avoid the problem Tecknomage identified.

So do you reckon I should go ahead and start that 545 MB download?

I have further queries about cloning etc, but maybe I'll come back later
with those.
 
A

Alias

Thanks Alias. I'll browse the SAMSUNG site more thoroughly later, as I
didn't immediately see the utility you mention for my 2 x 750 GB Serial
ATA2 HDs (identical, 'SAMSUNG HD753LJ SCSI Disk Device' says Device Mgr).
Click to expand...

The Samsung web site is a nightmare. I couldn't find it either. I use
Seagate and it's really easy to find it on their web site. You can use
the Seagate utility if you clone to a Seagate hard drive even though
you're cloning from a Samsung. You can download it from:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Once you've downloaded it, just click on the icon and it will offer to
make the CD.
But a more pressing query is that at the page referenced by Tecknomage

http://tinyurl.com/3xq4jy8
to get the 544.9 MB file
xpsp3_5512.080413 2113_usa_x86fre_spcd.ISO
I read this:
"DO NOT CLICK DOWNLOAD IF YOU ARE UPDATING JUST ONE COMPUTER: A smaller,
more appropriate download for individual users is now available on Windows
Update."
Click to expand...

Ignore that.
But doing that would not avoid the problem Tecknomage identified.

So do you reckon I should go ahead and start that 545 MB download?
Click to expand...

Of course.
 
G

glee

Terry Pinnell said:
Recently my PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, XP Pro SP2) has been
suddenly locking up. I often get a message
"The application or DLL
C:\WINDOWS\AppPatch\AcGenral.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please
check against your installation diskette."

BTW, the last sentence seems to date the message as written decades
ago!

Can anyone shed any light on this please? And what I should do about
it?

FWIW, I found another copy of AcGenral.dll and it was identical.

Also, I usually get another message when trying to display the Task
Manager, so that I can re-boot:
"Taskmgr.exe - Application Error
The application failed to initiate properly (0xc000012d)"

Not sure if this is a related or consequential issue, but it forces me
to
power down or use the reset button.
Click to expand...

Click Start> Run, type sfc.exe /scannow
Click OK
Insert your XP CD when prompted.

How To Use Sfc.exe To Repair System Files
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic43051.html
 

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