I'm at my mother's now. She asked me to do some maintenance on her PC, but while I was installing WinXP SP3, it failed to reboot. It just power cycles itself early in the boot process. Not even Safe Mode could avoid the reboot cycle.

A little diagnostic work and I discovered that somehow during the SP3 upgrade, the GDI32.DLL system file did not get installed correctly. That DLL is essential to getting the display system working, and even Safe Mode doesn't like to live without an output device.

"No problem!" said I; the SP3 upgrade had set a system restore point, so I just had to revert back to that image and perhaps try again. Pop in the ole' WinXP disc, boot from CD, and Bob's my uncle. (Hi, Uncle Bob and Aunt Jean!)

Unfortunatly, this PC was built by one of Mom's coworker's sons, and did not come with a WinXP disc. Which makes me suspicious that it perhaps may not be exactly properly liscenced. Which is the system builder's fault. But non-the-less, I was trying to help my Mom keep her computer up to par, and instead I bricked it.

All is not lost though, as I'll be visiting my friend Paul on Monday, and I expect I'll be able to borrow an XP disc from him for a few days, long enough to get Mom's PC back on it's feet.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go mow the lawn before it rains. Which it's been doing quite a bit of, recently.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:25 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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