My Win XP laptop suddenly won't boot up in regular or safe mode. I get an error "C:/windows/system32/SAMLIB.dll is not a valid Windows image." Any ideas? It is an HP Pavilion DV8225 laptop with Windows XP Media Center SP3.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Chris

http://www.computing.net/answers/hardwa ... 59238.html

As stated, run check disk, and then your HDD manufactures drive check. To do this you will require a copy of your installation CD for your system. If you don't have one then request one from HP, as the next step requires you to do a repair installation, which isn't noted as a reply.

Could start with a HDD check with the tools provided on the UBCD disc for your HDD. Then go from there.

_________________
~Just StopSpazzing~

Visit the UBCD Wiki: http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com
Please check your UBCD ISO MD5 Hash Sum; May prevent issues later on by not having an exact copy.

Currently Working on Common Issues and Repair Tips on the Wiki.

Stopspazzing, thanks for the reply. I can't get far enough into the OS to run chkdsk. Won't even boot in safe mode. I dowloaded UBCD and created a disc on my desktop PC. Loaded it on the laptop and ran full HDD tests, mem tests and system tests. No errors. I do not have recovery CDs. HP does not care enough about their customers to include them and I guess I was too stupid to make my own when I bought the laptop.

It appears to be just a corrupt samlib.dll file. I have another HP Win XP Media Center PC and could copy the file over from their if I could access the laptop drive somehow. Ideas?

Regards,

Chris

Yes, you could do that...unless they are identical OS versions may not work but that is another idea you could try.

1. Boot other computer and copy the file to an UFD (USB Flash Drive).
2. Plug in the USB to the into problematic computer and boot from CD.
3. Boot into Parted Magic.
4. Mount the HDD Drive (Drive Mount) and UFD.
5. Copy file to same folder you copied from on working computer.
6. Unmount Drives and reboot.

_________________
~Just StopSpazzing~

Visit the UBCD Wiki: http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com
Please check your UBCD ISO MD5 Hash Sum; May prevent issues later on by not having an exact copy.

Currently Working on Common Issues and Repair Tips on the Wiki.

That did it! I'm up and running. I'll do a little research on lsass.exe and samlib.dll to see how to reset for this machine. I copied from a desktop PC with Win XP Media Center to the laptop with Win XP Media Center but both were HP so it may be close to the same. The DLL files were slightly different in size so there is something different.

Thanks for the guidance!

Chris

Glad to hear it!

Could be that one of the systems is a different Service Pack (ex. SP1 and broken machine SP3). While it may work in the short run, could cause instability issues later on when installing/running certain programs. Be fore warned.

_________________
~Just StopSpazzing~

Visit the UBCD Wiki: http://wiki.ultimatebootcd.com
Please check your UBCD ISO MD5 Hash Sum; May prevent issues later on by not having an exact copy.

Currently Working on Common Issues and Repair Tips on the Wiki.

They are the same SP but just to be safe, I ran Chkdsk and am now running DeFrag. I also realized that now I can access the drives, I can copy the original samlib.dll from the recovery partition. Thanks again.

i have a HP Pavilion dv8000 with Windows XP media center edition when i tried to run the ultimate boot cd from my jump drive it said incompatible versions or something like that.What can i do to fix this. when i run the hard disk test in the bios it wont even run the test as if there is not a hard drive installed but i know there is. what should i do please help