Getting a lot of "entry point not found" errors

[Inappropriate4AT]

My stepdad asked me to take a look at his laptop for him, said he was getting some BSODs and a lot of other errors.

So I booted it up, ran a scan with Norton, nothing came up. After a while of playing around with it a "dwwin.exe entry point not found" error came up. Then from there it went downhill and I got the same error for firefox.exe, taskmgr.exe, and just about anything else I had/tried to run. And eventually it got to the point where you could click ok forever and the error would keep popping up. So I rebooted, and got a BSOD. Rebooted again and got into Windows.

All the errors are associated with the process createmutexa some crap about not being linked to kernel32.dll. So I did some Googling, and from what I read I think the error is related to either multiple kernel32.dll files, and/or the file being overwritten by another kernel32.dll that's incompatible, maybe from installing a program or something.

So I ran a search for "kernel32.dll" and 2 files came up, one in C:\I386, and another in the system folder where it should be. Seeing C:\I386 kind of confused me... not sure how that got there. Maybe it was copied off the installation CD or something. Is it safe to just delete the entire folder?

 

[xtknight]

Don't delete that folder quite yet.

DLLs in Windows are libraries containing lots of vital functions used to support the OS/apps. CreateMutexA() is in fact a vital function, and it really shouldn't be missing. You should somehow replace it with the original. What OS and service pack is it running?

 

[EatSpam]

Hard drive is possibly dying. Backup, reload Windows and see if that makes a difference. If not, its a hardware problem.

 

[Inappropriate4AT]

Thanks for the replies, I think we found the problem. It was XP Pro SP2 by the way. I ran Memtest after getting a BSOD that was associated to bad ram according to Microsoft, and it errored immediately, n just kept going. Like 500 errors within the first minute or so.

Never guessed it would've been a hardware problem, seemed like more a software thing.

 

[spyordie007]

Never guessed it would've been a hardware problem, seemed like more a software thing.

Surprisingly a large number of strange issues like this are hardware related.

glad to hear you figured it out

 

[Fizzi]

Hello Everyone...,
I am receiving an error message. It says, "The procedure entry point RpcCancel ThreadEx could not be located in the dynamic link library RPCRT4.dll".
Since i've seen it once, it keeps on popping up where i could only click "ok" again and again. Please tell me how can i get rid of this...

 

[Ketchup]

I would start with doing what the OP did back in 2005 and run memtest.