Troubleshooting NTVDM and WOW Startup Errors

ID: Q196453

The information in this article applies to:
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs. For information about how to do this, view the "Restoring the Registry" Help topic in Regedit.exe or the "Restoring a Registry Key" Help topic in Regedt32.exe.

SUMMARY

This is a step-by-step troubleshooter for troubleshooting NTVDM or WOW startup issues. Please note that Sysedit.exe is a 16-bit program available in Windows NT available for troubleshooting these issues. If it starts up, both the WOW and NTVDM DLLs and executables are okay and you need to concentrate on the environmental steps below. If SYSEDIT does not start up, try to run only the MS-DOS shell "command.com" from the command prompt. Please note that, if SYSEDIT does not run, all of the steps below apply.


MORE INFORMATION

  1. Check the Autoexec.nt and Config.nt for anything unusual or anything that can be commented out.


  2. Rename Autoexec.bat.


  3. Check for changes in Win.ini or System.ini, or replace by expanding the original files off of the installation media.


  4. Rename all other *.ini files if possible


  5. In the Config.nt file, allow only: 
    
      dos=high, umb
      device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys
      files=60
      shell=%SystemRoot%\system32\command.com /e:4096

    NOTE:



  6. Verify the environment variables by doing either of the following:



  7. Ensure that the path is the same as the default path off of the CD; that is, that there are no entries prepended to the path; if a nonstandard entry is there, remove it.


  8. Check path length for lengths after expansion that are near 200 characters. Path is a combination of path in Autoexec.nt and on the Environment tab in the System tool of Control Panel. If the path is over 100 characters, change it for testing.


  9. Check the following registry entries. The easiest way is to check them out is to see if they are populated first. (There are some cases where keys or subkeys just disappear.) Then, if the keys are fully populated, do not try to determine the correct values, just download them and load on a test system to see if the problem can be reproduced.

    WARNING: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

    For information about how to edit the registry, view the "Changing Keys And Values" Help topic in Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) or the "Add and Delete Information in the Registry" and "Edit Registry Data" Help topics in Regedt32.exe. Note that you should back up the registry before you edit it. If you are running Windows NT, you should also update your Emergency Repair Disk (ERD).



  10. If this does not work, you have missing or corrupted files. (More likely, the files will be corrupted rather than missing; try to replace these first.)

    Under system look for:

    Missing or corrupted DLLs second step:

    If it was not one of those, you can try the DLLs under the following registry key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\WOW

    Value: Known DLLs; here is the list of the DLLs, but most are in the list above.

    At this point, you may want to try the brute force method: do a parallel installation with all updates and just copy over %SystemRoot%\System and %SystemRoot%\System32 from the parallel installation to the new system.



A different approach which works well if the customer has the patience to try it; is to use the following third-party tools from www.sysinternals.com by Mark Russinovich. Please note that we cannot send these utilities to customers, but we may direct them there to download the utilities themselves.

Try running NTfilemon.exe. Just kill any existing NTVDMs and start NTFILEMON and then see which files it has problem opening. By replacing files at one per interaction you will eventually get the system back up.

Additional query words: 


Keywords          : kbtshoot 
Version           : winnt:4.0
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: July 2, 1999