J
JimC
For the 3rd time in a month I have had to fix the exact same XP Pro problem.
It has the characteristics of both a hardware/software glitch and a hacker's
clever trick. Here is the story...
Suddenly, on bootup an Application Error dialog states that Explorer.Exe
failed to initialize (error 0xc000006), which results in a barren (blank)
screen and mouse cursor. Of course, Alt+Ctrl+Del brings up Task Manager...
and you can run anything from there (or launch Windows Explorer/PowerDesk to
make running stuff easier). However, many Users would not remember to
invoke Task Manager or know that you can run tasks from it.
When I run Chkdsk /R and reboot, Chkdsk reports only fixing bad sectors in
Uxtheme.Dll. However, this produces an endless cycle of automatic
re-booting after the fix (because the "fixed" Uxtheme.Dll is no good).
However, using the XP CD and the Recovery Console, you can break this cycle
by renaming %systemroot%\System32\Uxtheme.Dll. After this action,
Explorer.Exe again fails on startup, but you can then copy a good version of
Uxtheme.Dll from %systemroot%\ServicePackfiles\I386\ to
%systemroot%\System32\. This completely fixes things until the next date
when something/someone corrupts Uxtheme.Dll.
Has anyone had the same repeated experience (and does anyone know how
Uxtheme.Dll is getting clobbered)?
I am beginning to think some kind of purposeful mischief is at work because
of how the same file (Uxtheme.Dll) keeps getting clobbered... and because
this causes what appears to be a big problem (that really has a simple
solution)... the kind of trickery that a hacker might enjoy visiting upon
others. Most folks would probably send their PC in for service... and I was
LUCKY to find the simple fix.
Is there a way to find out what process is clobbering Uxtheme.Dll?
--Jim
It has the characteristics of both a hardware/software glitch and a hacker's
clever trick. Here is the story...
Suddenly, on bootup an Application Error dialog states that Explorer.Exe
failed to initialize (error 0xc000006), which results in a barren (blank)
screen and mouse cursor. Of course, Alt+Ctrl+Del brings up Task Manager...
and you can run anything from there (or launch Windows Explorer/PowerDesk to
make running stuff easier). However, many Users would not remember to
invoke Task Manager or know that you can run tasks from it.
When I run Chkdsk /R and reboot, Chkdsk reports only fixing bad sectors in
Uxtheme.Dll. However, this produces an endless cycle of automatic
re-booting after the fix (because the "fixed" Uxtheme.Dll is no good).
However, using the XP CD and the Recovery Console, you can break this cycle
by renaming %systemroot%\System32\Uxtheme.Dll. After this action,
Explorer.Exe again fails on startup, but you can then copy a good version of
Uxtheme.Dll from %systemroot%\ServicePackfiles\I386\ to
%systemroot%\System32\. This completely fixes things until the next date
when something/someone corrupts Uxtheme.Dll.
Has anyone had the same repeated experience (and does anyone know how
Uxtheme.Dll is getting clobbered)?
I am beginning to think some kind of purposeful mischief is at work because
of how the same file (Uxtheme.Dll) keeps getting clobbered... and because
this causes what appears to be a big problem (that really has a simple
solution)... the kind of trickery that a hacker might enjoy visiting upon
others. Most folks would probably send their PC in for service... and I was
LUCKY to find the simple fix.
Is there a way to find out what process is clobbering Uxtheme.Dll?
--Jim