WinXP - License stopped validating?

[wpenhall]

Hello,

I'm running Win XP with all the latest updates. For several months, everything has been fine. Today, however, Windows started taking an extremely long time to "applying personal settings" when logging in either under Administrator or my personal account. After 45 min, I gave up waiting and booted into safe mode (no problem), ran chkdsk /f on c:, and it found and repaired several errors. However, when I now try to log into my personal account (with administrator privilages), I get the following message:

"A problem is preventing Windows from validating the license for this computer. Error 0x80040001"

Logging in under Administrator now still makes the computer idle seemingly forever under "applying personal settings." Logging into my personal account gives me the above error, then tries to log me out.

I can boot into safe mode in either account no problem, and all my files seem to be intact. The only thing is that it takes several seconds longer than normal to display the contents of a directory when selected.

Under safe mode, I tried going back to a few restore points. None made any difference.

Any suggestions on how to recover this other than reformatting and re-installing Windows?

Thanks!

 

[robisbell]

looks like an error for your DCOM server and/or dotNET. still researching the issue.

 

[wpenhall]

Hi Robisbell - anything you can do to help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

Originally posted by: robisbell
looks like an error for your DCOM server and/or dotNET. still researching the issue.

 

[robisbell]

okay, not finding any fixes, did a lot of digging. you could try running SFC /scannow in safe mode and see if that fixes anything, I'd like to see if you can access the system event viewer and look for any errors. also, try using msconfig and strip it down to the bare essentials if the System File Checker does not work.

 

[cubby1223]

I would boot to the xp cd and go into the recovery console. Delete or rename the files:
c:\windows\system32\wgalogon.dll
c:\windows\system32\wgatray.exe
c:\windows\system32\legitcheckcontrol.dll

Reboot into Windows normally. There's a few more steps after to completely remove wga, a quick google search will do the rest. Should be able to get you into Windows then you can search for the true problem. And at this point, I believe Windows will put wga back in the list of updates needing to re-downloaded & reinstalled. Note, this is separate from the IE plugin that's needed to download from Microsoft, which will remain fully installed.

 

[wpenhall]

Thanks Cubby -

Before I saw your message, I checked the event logs per robisbell. Lots of warnings and errors of the type:

A bad block was detected in device (hardrive).

An error was discovered in device (hardrive) during a paging operation.

I then went to drive properties/tools/error-checking. This provided two more steps than chkdsk /f. Since it was c:, it had to do the op during startup. Upon reboot, no problems with the first 3 steps (files, indicies, security) since I had fixed them earlier. However, under step 4 - verifying file data, windows replaced bad clusters in numerous files - including wpa.dbl which IIRC is the windows product activation file.

So, now on reboot into my personal account, the license problem message I originally posted no longer appears. I now get the dialog that says this windows product needs to be activated and I can do it on-line, call-in, etc. However, on top of this I get a new error dialog that says something like (I'm at work and going from memory here) "Bad Image - winrnr.??? does not match the existing image." Or something like that.

On-line activation failed, and I haven't had time to Google this error message yet. I'm open to any insight you guys can provide.

I feel like we're making progress here. Thanks for your help, both of you!

 

[robisbell]

You could type regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\winrnr.dll in the Start->Run box, and click OK?

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: wpenhall
A bad block was detected in device (hardrive).

An error was discovered in device (hardrive) during a paging operation.

These messages say, copy all your important documents to another hard drive immediately. You are replacing the drive and installing Windows from scratch.


Once in a while you can get away with cloning the drive as best as the cloning software can then run a repair install, but it's never a guarantee.

 

[wpenhall]

Ah - so this suggests an imminent failure of my drive - not just a random data corruption issue?

Thanks!

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: wpenhall
A bad block was detected in device (hardrive).

An error was discovered in device (hardrive) during a paging operation.

These messages say, copy all your important documents to another hard drive immediately. You are replacing the drive and installing Windows from scratch.


Once in a while you can get away with cloning the drive as best as the cloning software can then run a repair install, but it's never a guarantee.

 

[robisbell]

You could type regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\winrnr.dll in the Start->Run box, and click OK.

 

[wpenhall]

In Safe Mode? Because that's all I can get to.

Originally posted by: robisbell
You could type regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\winrnr.dll in the Start->Run box, and click OK.

 

[robisbell]

yes.

 

[wpenhall]

Ok - the message specifically is: "The application winrnr.dll is not a valid windows image. Please check against your installation diskette."

When I type in your suggestion, I get "winrnr.dll is not an executable file and no registration helper is registered for this file type."

Would you recommend replacing mine with a copy from a place like: http://www.driverskit.com/dll/winrnr.dll/3907.html?

 

[robisbell]

you could give it a try, if that does not work, a reinstall is going to be needed. I saw the errors, but I would have you verify with http://ultimatebootcd.com and run the HDD manufacturer diagnostics to be certain.

 

[cubby1223]

When you have a hard drive that is possibly going bad, the absolute last thing you want to do is perform any operation that writes to the drive. Only operations that read from the drive. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but you want to keep the writes to a minimum.

Hook the drive to another computer, if you can, cancel chkdsk if it wants to run on startup. Copy important documents first, then try to copy everything else. The good news is the problem seems with the surface of the drive, not the mechanics of the drive, so you should be able to copy most files off.



The problem with the computer is a hard drive going bad, not that some .dll files need to be re-registered. So forget that. Copying the documents off is far more important. Windows does not lie to you when it reports bad blocks being detected. That is never a good sign.

 

[wpenhall]

Thanks, cubby. Everything important on there is backed up, so I'm not too worried about it dying on me now. I just didn't want to go through the hassle of reinstalling windows and all my apps. I've ordered a new drive, so until it arrives, I'm curious to continue this as a science project to see if I can get it working again.

I'm going out of town tomorrow, so I'll pick this up again in a couple days.

Thanks again to you and robisbell for your concern and your help.

 

[robisbell]

no problem, have a safe trip.