Robert Owen — Technology Leader & Musician

Technology leadership, music, and the space where they overlap

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Load DLL’s needed for Kernel – XP

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Had a user call reporting their computer shutting off suddenly. On reboot, they received the message “On last operation CPU reported a thermal event” Well.. This told me that the CPU fan had probably choked and the CPU had overheated causing the PC shut down. Upon inspection I found my initial thought was only partially correct.

The CPU had overheated, that was obvious, because the heat sync below the fan was completely clogged with dust… or a small feline, I’m not sure which. BUT, The fan was still working. Everyone should now take a look at the blog entry I made on cleaning your PC.

Now, what does that have to do with the DLL title? Well, it appears that one of the times the PC shut down on them, Windows was making use of some system files and they were corrupted or deleted. This caused the error:

“Windows unable to start, Load DLL’s needed for Kernel” this effectively halts boot-up. No chance for safe mode… Nothing. According to Microsoft he only solution at this point was to do an “In place” reinstall of Windows XP. This is a pain in the … but things could be worse.  I’ve recently found another soultion that may or may not work for you but here it is.

Boot your system from the Windows XP CD and choose to repair your system via the Recovery Console.
Once in the Recovery console select your installation of windows and follow these following steps:

  1. type: “CHKDSK /f/r”  – this will take a long time but should fix the file system errors on the disk.
  2. type: “BOOTCFG /rebuild” – This rebuilds your boot configuration.
  3. type: “FIXBOOT” – fixes the boot sector.
  4. type: “FIXMBR” – Fixes master boot record.
  5. and lastly type: “EXIT”  – This exits the recovery console and reboots your computer.

I’ve not had an opportunity to test this second option for myself but, it looks like it should work well. The chkdsk takes a while to so it’s not much of a time saver or the “In-Place” reinstall. But it might save you some grief  should your installed programs get removed from the refreshed registry.

So.. In short… Take the time and check out the state of your PC.. Or have someone do it for you. It could save you A LOT of grief.

© 2009, Robert Owen. All rights reserved.

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