SOLUTION: Q811493 crashes system at boot with BSOD C0000135 WINSRV.DLL could not be found

From: Edwin van de Burgt (edwintijdelijk_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/29/04


Date: 29 Feb 2004 14:19:39 -0800

After DE-installing Q811493 on Windows-2000 SP3, by means of the
"Add/remove programs", the computer would halt with a "Blue Screen Of
Death", with error:

STOP C0000135 {Unable to Locate DLL}
The Dynamic link library WINSRV.DLL could not be found in the
specified path Default Load Path.

Because W2K doesn't boot anymore, you're in big trouble.

Some more info about this problem and a possible solution which worked
for me:

I always had "Automatic Updates" running and downloaded every
suggested critical patch. For some reasen, however, patch Q811493 kept
on downloading, day after day. Apparently, I installed it a long time
ago and although MS had re-released this patch, this patch wouldn't
install anymore but kept showing up in Automatic Updates.

Therefore, I decided to remove the patch Q811493... That might solve
the problem, I figured. So I removed Q811493 by means of the "Control
Panel", "Add/remove programs". After that, a reboot was required.
After the reboot, however, W2K crashes with the above mentioned error.

I tried the recovery option of the windows setup CD, but that didn't
work, so after a *lot* of trial-and-error, I installed a parallel copy
of W2K, so I could try to pinpoint the problem better. It appears
that, contrary to the error message, the mentioned file WINSRV.DLL
*WAS* installed. And also the registry wasn't corrupt: if you search
the MS knowledge-base the cause of the error C0000135 could be a
missing file or a corrupt SOFTWARE registry hive. From my "research"
these aren't the only possible causes of the error message:

*** It could as well be a version mismatch problem with the file
WINSRV.DLL and other files! ***

If only MS would indicate this in the BSOD-error...

Searching the newsgroups I found a remedy: via the "Recovery Console"
I changed to the \WINNT\$NtUninstallKB824141$\spuninst directory and
gave the command: batch spuninst.bat

This removes the update KB824141 and reinstalls the old files which
were replaced by KB824141. This restore includes WINSRV.DLL (as well
as other critical kernel files like kernel32.dll, gdi32.dll,
user32.dll, userenv.dll, msgina.dll, basesrv.dll, sp3res.dll).

Actually, I don't think KB824141 has anything to do with the problem I
had, but because KB824141 is also an update of critical KERNEL files,
just like Q811493, the de-installation of KB824141 just restored the
system to a CONSISTENT set of kernel files... So, without the fortune
of another kernel-update patch, whose de-installation did work out
fine, you'd probably would be in big problems trying to get a
consistent set of kernel files back into the system.

Of course, there's always the option of reinstalling W2K from the
installation CD, but then you'd have to apply all service packs and
updates again; it'll work probably, but I didn't want to give up so
easily :-)

Spending 4 hours solving a MS bug (booting from the installation CD is
real slowwwww), I decided to disable Automatic Updates for at least a
while...

Hope this is helpful to anyone.

Kind regards,

   Edwin van de Burgt.
   (Replies via the newsgroup please. Email-address will expire)



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