PCA Forums

my cousin turned on his computer and out of the blue he got a message like this:

"windows could not start because of a error in the software. please report this problem as load needed DLLs for kernal. please contact your support person for this problem."

and when he presses a key the computer restarts and the same message pops up.
he can't get into windows. he tried using a startup disk and tried using safemode but no luck, he can't get in. i think this is the second time this happend to his system. he had to reformat the system a week ago because of a similar problem. what exactly is wrong here? how can he fix it?

http://www.jsifaq.com/SUBL/tip5900/rh5962.htm


<i>When you start Windows XP, you receive:

Windows could not start because of an error in the software. Please report this problem as : load needed DLLs for kernel. Please contact your support person to report this problem.

This issue can be caused by mismatched or damaged library (.dll) files.

You may have to reinstall Windows XP.

NOTE: If you perform an in-place upgrade of Windows XP, all your restore points are replaced by a new System Checkpoint restore point. If you want to use System Restore to roll back to a previous state, DO NOT perform an in-place upgrade.</i>

If the .dll files keep getting damaged then I suspect a virus. If he doesn't have one then a good free one is at http://www.grisoft.com

alright. thx a lot blade

You're welcome.

According to this, it could also be a hard drive going bad:
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/wi ... 1036083151

I'll second Blade on his virus scanner reccommendation. AVG Anti Virus, from Grisoft, is fantastic. Low memory overhead, scan scheduling, update scheduling, e-mail integration, and boot-up detection. All of the characteristics of better-known (and more expensive) scanning software. Can't really beat the free price. Plus, AVG found and eliminated a massive Opaserv/Fun Love infection on one of our clients' point-of-sale systems. Norton didn't have a definition for it.