Does not compute

February 2, 2009 4:59 PM

Home computer hosed - what means this message: "load needed DLLS for kernal" ?

Homemachine is a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T40 running Windows XP. Worked fine until this evening, when it gave me the Blue Screen of Death twice, then refused to boot, returning this error message: "load needed DLLs for kernal." I do not have Windows disks for this thing, which I bought off E-Bay.

I don't give a damn about the computer, but I give a large damn about the files on it. Are they gone, or can they be recovered? Thanks in advance.

posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Hundreds of dll (dynamic link library) files are generally required to run Windows XP, but just because some are corrupted or missing doesn't mean that your other data has been affected. Take the hard drive out, take it to a PC shop, and get them to dump the data onto a DVD (or do this yourself if you have an external USB housing for a laptop HDD).
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:03 PM on February 2

Ordinarily the solution would be to use the XP install disk and do a "repair" with them. That's different than a full installation. What it does is to check all the system files, and replace them from the install disk if they're bad.

That's what your problem is. At least one standard library file (that's what DLLs are) that is needed to boot the system is loused up. This has nothing to do with the data files, and with a fair amount of unpleasant effort those could be retrieved.

What effort? One way is to remove the drive from the computer and then mount it in a USB enclosure and access it via USB from another computer.

Doing a system repair would be a lot easier, except that you can't, because you don't have the system disk.

The one possibility that suggests itself is that there's probably a repair partition on your disk. That contains about the same stuff as the XP install disk, and can be used the same way, but accessing it means getting into the BIOS and telling it to boot off the repair partition instead of the normal one. Figuring out how to do that would require access to the technical manuals for the specific model of computer you own.

And unfortunately, sometimes those extra partitions don't permit the "repair" option, so running it causes a reformat/reinstall, resulting in destruction of all your data files.

My recommendation is to purchase an XP install disk and use it to repair your installation. That way you probably won't lose your data files, and you don't have to disassemble your computer.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:09 PM on February 2

Yeah, I'm not so worried about losing the data, really, because I've had dealings with DLLs before -- but I do want to know what caused this and whether or not it may happen again. This will drive my decision to buy another computer or not (and not a refurbished one this time).
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 5:10 PM on February 2

Ditto dahlia. While it's wholly possible you're getting this error due to a disk problem, there's no reason to assume right now that the data you care about is gone.

For best chances of recovery, stop messing with the drive in any way (don't try to boot it again) and make a bit-by-bit copy of the entire drive. Look at your copy for the files you want.
posted by Zed at 5:10 PM on February 2

Pickle, probably isn't good enough for these data -- I must be able to retrieve them. My leaning is to go to a pro near here and have them coddle the thing for me.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 5:12 PM on February 2

Okay, no more reboots, Zed -- thanks. But if I can't get the fucker running, how to make a copy? Again, I think I'd rather pay a pro...
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 5:14 PM on February 2

You take out the drive, put it in a USB enclosure, and plug that into another computer (that has enough drive space to make the copy.) If that's daunting, or you don't have another computer, you might need a pro (or a geek friend.)

As for whether to replace the computer, I'd say odds are good a new drive and a fresh OS install will have you back in good shape. You can get a new drive for about $50 on Ebay. But keep in mind that a new netbooks are around $300 (Best Buy has the MSI Wind with a 160GB hard drive for $329.)
posted by Zed at 5:30 PM on February 2

As for whether to replace the computer, I'd say odds are good a new drive and a fresh OS install will have you back in good shape.

I don't necessarily agree. Based on your description, the corrupted DLLs are possibly just a symptom of your computer hard-crashing a few times. With hard crashes, you can only avoid file corruption so many times. And when crashes like this happen out of the blue, it usually points to some sort of hardware malfunction.

Now, that malfunction may just be a bad hard drive. Or maybe it's bad memory. Or maybe you've blown capacitors in the motherboard, or...etc. A computer technician can probably tell you with more certainty, though depending on your budget, as Zed points out, new laptops are getting cheaper all the time (and it's about time!).

At any rate, if you value your data, your first step should be to take the suggestions above and find a way to get your data off the drive, preferably without the host computer being involved in the archival process. Securing your data integrity will free you up to take many more drastic measures to try to fix things up. Conversely, if you move forward and your machine continues to blue screen, well, it's only a matter of time before important (to you) files get corrupted in the process.
posted by Brak at 6:00 PM on February 2

I second the "partition thing", I recently purchased an IBM refurb, and that's how mine is setup. To enter the bios setup at boot time, hit enter during the splash screen.

If you wanted to attempt to fix it, and you're able to get to the "repair" mode, here are two links that might help.

One more idea for how to access your data: boot using a livecd of some linux os. Hopefully you have a spare computer, a helpful friend, or a cd lying around. This option won't attempt to access your hard drive until you tell it to. (You might get an error on attempting to mount the partition, since windows may not have done a "clean shutdown". You might try a "force mount", but maybe run chkdsk first.)

good luck
posted by philomathoholic at 12:03 AM on February 3

Expanding on philomathoholic's suggestion... get a live CD of a recent Ubuntu distribution and boot from the CD. When given the option, do a test install that does NOT affect the data on the hard drive. Once Ubuntu boots you should be able to click on the icon for your XP partition to mount it and then browse the hard drive just like you would with Windows. Copy whatever you need onto a thumb drive. If you get lucky you might even have network access via Ubuntu and can just email files to a Gmail or Yahoo account to pick up later.
posted by COD at 5:43 AM on February 3

Thanks everyone -- I'll mull over what I've learned here and see what best suits my needs. All of this simply confirms my conviction that the Wisdom of the Ages is in the Metafilter.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 10:31 AM on February 3