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WINSRV.DLL missing on certain workstations.
I've been working with a support team for a week now, and a perculiar problem arose this morning, for 6 different users. When they booted up, they had a blue screen, stating "winsrv.dll" is missing. I checked this via recovery console, and it wasn't missing at all.
These users all have somthing in common:
Windows 2000 Professional
Service Pack 2
IBM Laptops
We have since solved this issue via restore, but I am searching high and low for the cause of it. I am suspecting an auto-update that was applied to the network recently, but I cannot be certain.
If anyone has had the same problem, or know the cause of this enigma, could you please post a description and your hypothesis?
Many thanks in advance.
David Price
These users all have somthing in common:
Windows 2000 Professional
Service Pack 2
IBM Laptops
We have since solved this issue via restore, but I am searching high and low for the cause of it. I am suspecting an auto-update that was applied to the network recently, but I cannot be certain.
If anyone has had the same problem, or know the cause of this enigma, could you please post a description and your hypothesis?
Many thanks in advance.
David Price
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SOLUTION
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We've been having the same problem at my company of 800+ workstations.
It's crashed a ton of PC's.. Luckily we've been able to repair them successfully. Basically what we've managed to do is cut down the auto daily SP4 updates from 25 a day to 10 - which to date seems to have resolved the problem without a single PC BSOD'n with the WINSRV.DLL error. We are also at a loss of what the heck is causing the problem! We've figured the end user was the root cause but at this point is doubtful. It's a serious problem since some of the PC's needed to be totally re-imaged and data restored.
It's crashed a ton of PC's.. Luckily we've been able to repair them successfully. Basically what we've managed to do is cut down the auto daily SP4 updates from 25 a day to 10 - which to date seems to have resolved the problem without a single PC BSOD'n with the WINSRV.DLL error. We are also at a loss of what the heck is causing the problem! We've figured the end user was the root cause but at this point is doubtful. It's a serious problem since some of the PC's needed to be totally re-imaged and data restored.
Ok Here's my problem, all of our machines are current with sp4 except for this machine that is giving the same error. It wil not boot at all I am able to access the setup.log file and edit it but I don't have a pre sp2 machine to look up the correct entry.
To fix this, mount the hard drive from the failing system as a slave drive in a working system. Then browse to the slave drive using Windows Explorer and navigate into the C:\WINNT$NtServicePackUnin
After the replace function is complete, close the replace dialog and close and save the batch file. Then launch the batch file to uninstall SP4 on the slave drive. When complete, shutdown and return the drive to its original system and you should be able to boot normally. Reapply SP4 on the machine.
After the replace function is complete, close the replace dialog and close and save the batch file. Then launch the batch file to uninstall SP4 on the slave drive. When complete, shutdown and return the drive to its original system and you should be able to boot normally. Reapply SP4 on the machine.
winsrv.dll
ASKER
You are right about the solution being quicker than eliminating the cause... I just hope that the other 350 users dont decide to have the same problem. Unfortunately, this problem HAS to be explained, and the cause identified... it's the drawback of working for a large company.
I've looked for some sort of pattern and 9 of the 10 computers effected, are Tseries IBM laptops (the other being an IBM NetVista workstation)... I'm hoping that microsoft will identify a problem with one of their updates, and IBM laptops running win2k sp2... but then again, i hope I win the lottery too.
Thanks again guys.