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2006-08-09
Machine Refuses to Boot
I just updated my Windows with some "critical security updates." Turns out to be a deadly mistake. It refuses to boot anymore. Of course, it comes with a BSOD, and it complains that the file urlmon.dll is corrupted and failed the checksum test. Since the motherboard also complained the machine rebooted abnormally, I suspected it could also be the heating problem. But dusting does not work this time.
This comes at a very bad time, since I have just sold my backup desktop machine. It would be hard for me to prepare a rescue disk.
Glad that I have a Ubuntu live CD with me. Unlike some people I know, who are zealous about Ubuntu for its GUI, I am more a fan of Gentoo Linux for its "recompiling everything optimized for your machine" philosophy. Yet the practice of freely handing out CDs from Ubuntu sometimes comes very handy. So I downloaded a good version of the dll file from DLL-files and then used Captive to mount and overwrite the file to my Windows NTFS partition. Now the machine finally agrees to reboot, only to complain that this time browseui.dll is corrupted. Lather, rinse, repeat, finally it boots again.
So I wasted an hour fixing the machine after security updates, and then another 15 mins telling you about it in this blog. Thank you so much, Microsoft!
This comes at a very bad time, since I have just sold my backup desktop machine. It would be hard for me to prepare a rescue disk.
Glad that I have a Ubuntu live CD with me. Unlike some people I know, who are zealous about Ubuntu for its GUI, I am more a fan of Gentoo Linux for its "recompiling everything optimized for your machine" philosophy. Yet the practice of freely handing out CDs from Ubuntu sometimes comes very handy. So I downloaded a good version of the dll file from DLL-files and then used Captive to mount and overwrite the file to my Windows NTFS partition. Now the machine finally agrees to reboot, only to complain that this time browseui.dll is corrupted. Lather, rinse, repeat, finally it boots again.
So I wasted an hour fixing the machine after security updates, and then another 15 mins telling you about it in this blog. Thank you so much, Microsoft!
