Server 2003 fails to boot, "load needed DLLs"

[Guest Oranuf]

System worked great for over 4 months. Rebooted a Windows 2003 Server

instance inside XenExpress today, and instead of booting up as it should,

all we get is the following error:

 

"Windows could not start because of an error in the software. Please report

this problem as : load needed DLLs for kernel. Please contact your support

person to report this problem."

 

Two other test instances in the VM also booted up with this error. That's

three instances that are hosed.

 

The OS has all the latest service packs and patches that I know of (SP2 plus

all subsequent hotfixes/etc.), and had been rebooted since those updates

without issue.

 

Have tried all MS articles related to hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe, using SP2

versions of those files and the correct type of those files extracted, per

\windows\repair\setup.log. Still no joy.

 

Here's the info from setup.log on the actual VM I'm trying to fix:

 

\WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll = "halaacpi.dll", "20143"

\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe = "ntoskrnl.exe", "227422"

 

So I went and found the correct files to be expanded from Service Pack 2,

stuck them on a CD and copied them to the dead system's system32 directory.

No luck.

 

Versions of the original files and the ones I expanded from Service Pack 2:

 

ORIGINAL hal.dll -- 118272 bytes, 2/17/2007 3:08am

EXPANDED hal.dll - 118272 bytes, 2/16/2007 10:48pm

 

ORIGINAL ntoskrnl.exe -- 2430464 bytes, 3/5/2007 9:04am

EXPANDED ntoskrnl.exe -- 2430464 bytes, 2/16/2007 11:29pm

 

SO -- after expanding, the files appear to be exactly the same EXCEPT that

the file dates and times... and the system still will not boot using the

expanded files.

 

Did a boot in safe mode, and it appears to go past hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe,

the last line says "kdcom.dll" and then I get the error message "load needed

DLLs for kernel."

 

Hardware checks out -- Dell 1950, XenExpress 4.1, dual 750GB RAID1 SATA

drives, according to the RAID software drives are working fine. Standard

stuff, really.

 

Are there other core files needed for startup that could be broken, that I

could try to compare and recover? If this happens to servers that we've set

up for other clients, I'm complete toast -- it'll be hours of downtime while

I completely rebuild them and then restore from backup, and I'll be insane.

I don't dare reboot them out of fear they won't come back up. Is there any

way to check and see if they too are destined for failure?

 

Should I try combinations of the two different hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe

files or will that be a waste of time considering they are the same size?

 

Tremendous help will be appreciated... really in a bind here.

 

Thanks!

 

O