Can't boot up

[robj]

For a few days had an error message when shutting down "USR pbda. exe DLL initialisation failed....."

Last few days, could not boot up; Win seeme dto boot in background (usual screens flashed up) but then noyhing. I eventually get in by switching on/off and hitting reset - not very scientific!

Went to advanced system info and got this "The server {F3A614DC-ABE0-11D2-A441-00C04 F795683} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout." This has been logged for the last few days since this problem started.

I really don't know where to start to solve this. Clearly I can't continue this hit and miss way of starting up.

Any suggestions please?

[Scarecrow Man]

Found on another forum

OS Windows XP Home Service Pack 2

I have been getting the message "USRprbdA.exe - DLL Initialization

Failed : The application failed to initialize because the window station

is shutting down."

I searched all over the Internet and found many others having the same

problem, but none of the suggested fixes worked for me.

I opened the event viewer and clicked the link "For more information,

see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp."

The automated help system said "The program could not load a driver

because the program user doesn't have sufficient privileges to access

the driver or because the drive is missing or corrupt."

Searching the US Robotics web site didn't get me anything. So being

hard headed, as I often am, I spent some time to figure out what the

problem was and how to fix it. Here is what I came up with....

In reality the problem is that Windows is running what amounts to a

device driver on a user account, I think this is always a bad idea, but

nobody cares what I think. Because of this I realized the problem would

likely be fixed if I could force the driver to run on the System

account. So if you don't like my specific fix, perhaps you can find a

better way to change the account used by the driver.

1) Open the system registry (yes this is a little risky, be very

careful). Click Start Button> Run> Type "Regedit" click OK.

2) Open the registry key...

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run]Of course I have deleted the subkey name and don't remember what it was

called, but you are looking for the key that has a string value of

"C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\USRmlnkA.exe RunServices \Device\3cpipe-USRpdA"

3) Delete this entry.

4) Click Start Button>Run>Type CMD and Click OK.

5) In the command window type "cd \windows" and press enter

6) Type Edit and press enter

7) In the first line of the screen type C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\USRmlnkA.exe

RunServices \Device\3cpipe-USRpdA

8) Press Alt then F then A

9) Type Modem.cmd and press enter.

10) Press Alt then F the X

11) Type Exit and press enter.

12) Click Start Button>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Scheduled Tasks

13) Click File>New>Schedule Task

14) Name it Modem Driver or whatever you want

15) Right Click the new task and Left Click Properties

16) Use the Browse Button to point the task at C:\Windows\Modem.cmd

17) In the "Run As" box, Type "System", here is where it may get a

little tricky, don't enter a password, just click OK, then Click Apply,

The user name will disappear, don't worry about it.

18) Click Schedule and select "At System Startup"

19) Click Settings and un-check all the boxes. Basically you do not

want the service to quit running until the PC is shutdown.

When you restart the computer, right click the task bar and left click

Task Manager. Click Processes, make sure "Show processes from all

users" is checked. You should find the following exe files running on

the system account. usrshuta.exe, usrmlnka.exe, usrmlnka.exe. If so

your modem should be working and the error message should go away. If

not, delete the scheduled task, remove you modem using the Device

Manager and let Windows re-install it.

Troy

That's it, re-start your computer.

[robj]

Thanks for that. Sounds frightening! One query - I have a router not modem. How will that affect the fix?

[Scarecrow Man]

Perhaps this fix was for a similar, but not the same problem. A modem can also be a router, and visa versa. Most new modems have routers built into them.

The first step would be a restore from backup, or system restore.