Help with sister's computer, xp won't start

C

Chicki123

New Member
Hi, I am posting this for my sister so please bear with me as she lives miles away from me and I am writing what she tells me over the phone.

Her computer will not start xp. The black xp start up page comes up and then she gets a black screen with the following message:

winlogon.exe unable to locate component. this application has failed to start because ODBC32.dll was not found.
Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.


Please advise as to how to fix this problem. Thanks!
 
as it says, reinstall xp... fresh install
it says quite clearly that winlogon.exe is missing.
without winlogon.exe it is not possible to log on to windows
 
It actually says winlogon cannot find odbc32.dll not that winlogon.exe is missing.

If you have a windows XP cd, boot from it and go to the recovery console (it will give you 3 choices, Enter to install, R to go to the recovery onsole or F3 to quit). In the recovery console, assmung the hard drive is C and cd drive is D type:
expand d:\i386\odbc32.dl_ c:\windows\system32\odbc32.dll

Alternatively you could just run a repair install which should keep all your settings and programs intact.
 
Thanks, Cromewell that is what I thought.

But I think it is an OEM version of XP so she doesn't have an xp cd to reinstall. Is there anything else she can do?
 
OEM still comes with a windows disk. You will need one to run recovery console. Another option to rebuild the whole boot strap, and vital files to run windows you can do the following:

Boot off a windows XP CD and choose option R for recovery console and type in the following commands

Code: 
attrib -R c:\boot.ini
attrib -s c:\boot.ini
attrib -h c:\boot.ini

del c:\boot.ini
This changes the attributes of the boot.ini file so you can delete it

Code: 
bootcfg /rebuild
This rebuilds various dll files which are required to run windows. It will ask you if you want to add options you should select yes, and then add the following two options: /noexectute=optin /fastdetect

Code: 
chkdsk /r
This will scan the file system and rebuild anything it can if there is any corruption

Code: 
fixboot

This writes a new boot sector on the HD. Then reboot your machine and it should run like new. I have used this fix many many times to fix problems similar to yours.
 
She has an xp cd and is running a repair of it right now. Does it take hours to do this? She has gotten to a point after entering her authenticity number and has a blue screen showing up now with nothing written on it. Is this a bad thing or does it mean that something is loading?

Thanks
 
wait for some one else but i would say restart and try agian. BUT WAIT. it may mess up your comp. i dont know for sure so wait for some one else to back me up. :D
 
You could have started taping F8 when booting and tried Last Known Good Configuration but alittle late for that since you started the repair, but no your not suppost go get a blank blue screen, when you get into the repair install it should look similar to the regular install screen
 
I guess the only thing to do is try the repair install again or after that , if it doesnt work the second time you could try a clean install, if neither works there might be a hardware problem.
 
Chicki123 said:
She has an xp cd and is running a repair of it right now. Does it take hours to do this? She has gotten to a point after entering her authenticity number and has a blue screen showing up now with nothing written on it. Is this a bad thing or does it mean that something is loading?

Thanks
Click to expand...

So you got the main blue screen and hit R for recovery console, then ran all the commands I listed?
 
He was running a repair install and after she put her pin number in the screen just went blue, I dont think he hit the R at first for the Repair Console
 
Sorry, no she didn't run the recovery console. She pressed enter on the first screen and then went to repair.

She is currently trying to run that repair function again.
 
Ok so she ran it again, same problem.

Here is what happened. She ran repair from repair screen after pressing enter and then r. Setup ran and then completed. It said saving settings and then restarted.

Here is where the blue screen comes in.
Her screen said...to improve the appearance of visual elements, windows will automatically adjust your screen resolution. then it goes to the blue screen and just stays there.

Any ideas as to what to do?
Please advise
 
well perhaps the video card is crapping out when the OS applies some heavier settings on it. Its really hard to say with out having the PC in front of me to tinker with. Take it down to minimum configuration and see if it will load the OS. Take out all un needed hardware to run the system and unhook all external devices (except keyboard, mouse, monitor of course) and see what happens.
 
She is wanting to run a chkdsk /p as she was told to do this.

Will this fix the problem? If she runs chkdsk /r will she lose her files that were on the computer before the crash? How do u use this command?

Thanks again
 
Chicki123 said:
She is wanting to run a chkdsk /p as she was told to do this.

Will this fix the problem? If she runs chkdsk /r will she lose her files that were on the computer before the crash? How do u use this command?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

1st off anytime you do anything on your computer you risk data loss, even by logging into windows you risk the chance of it crashes, however obviously not all actions will cause this as far as probability goes

no the /r switch is to attempt to repair any damage it finds to the file system.
 
Ok she is going to try to run this /r command. After it runs, can she try to start xp without the cd?

thanks again for all the patience with this
 
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