- Jun 30, 2004
- 15,879
- 1,549
- 126
I had gone through a couple months of troubleshooting for an instability that would take 10 days or more to occur -- the computer running 24/7. The basics on the hardware are in my sig, although the gfx card has been replaced now by a GTX 780.
I think I've eliminated the source of the problem -- one way or the other.
I turned my attention to the operating system. "was there ever any corruption?" "Do I need to do the "upgrade install" to keep my software and settings?" "Or should I simply reinstall the OS and go through the misery of installing an inventory of drivers and software?"
Some of my problems likely arose from immature hardware drivers, and all that has been dealt with. There are "red-bang" errors in my Windows event logs that have persisted almost since I built the computer, but I finally began to deal with them effectively. I'll get back to that in a quick second.
I ran the command-prompt "SFC /SCANNOW" to see if there was any corruption of the OS files. The CBS.log is extremely verbose, but after looking at it closely enough, there is only one "Cannot repair" error. It is not "corruption," but instead a "missing file:" MFC80.DLL.
This is a particular revision of the MFC80.DLL file -- version 8.0.50727.762. It is part of the Visual studio C++ redistributable -- not an OS component -- installed by software, or occasionally installed with the entire redistributable package.
There are two versions fo the C++ redistributable: a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. I may have downloaded the 64-bit version and installed it at some point to fix something, and I only vaguely remember. In these vague memories, I am pretty sure that I avoided installing or reinstalling the 32-bit version.
Otherwise, with software installations, several versions of MFC80.DLL (32 or 64) may reside together on the system, and the OS manages all those versions for benefit of the softwares that may need them. I somehow found the install-date for the missing version: it was 8-14-2011 -- three months after I built the system. Another piece of software had also been installed on that date: the nVidia System Tools that included nVidia Monitor -- which I don't need and don't use. I uninstalled it, but the SFC /SCANNOW results are still identical.
This doesn't seem to me to be any significant "OS corruption," and utilities like CHKDSK don't turn up any kind of HDD problem. Even so, I seem to have traced versions of MFC80.DLL to "red-bang" "SidebySide" errors on the event logs: most of the copy/versions of MFC80 are stored in an SxS subdirectory. And it may even be the case that the 32-bit version showing up in the SFC scans was related to Acronis Disk Director 11, but uninstalling that program didn't resolve the CBS.log result.
Instead, I got rid of all the red-bang SxS errors with the Acronis uninstall, and by allowing Nuance's "Common Software Manager" to "bother me" all the time with "upgrade" promotions for new software I don't need.
This left a couple red-bang event-log errors I'd been trying to resolve for a long time. One was a "COM" service error, such that the service could not start because of insufficient security privileges. I finally got that cleaned up through reassigning ownership and privileges in the "Component Services" feature of Windows.
This the component service at issue was the IPBusEnum service, which in turn -- affected a NetIO driver. Right away, I suspected I'd need to reinstall my network driver, and I did -- but not before getting a "0C2" BSOD stop error after committing the ownership and security changes. After reboot and reinstallation of the Intel version 18 network driver, this error has not repeated itself.
This leaves me wondering about the MFC80.DLL missing version.
Should I download and install the 32-bit C++ redistributable under my 64-bit Windows 7 OS? Should I ignore the MFC80.DLL anomaly? Is it time to start planning on either an "Upgrade" install of Windows or completely wipe the HDD clean to reinstall the OS, drivers and software from scratch?
One missing DLL file that doesn't seem to affect anything just seems insufficient justification for being in a hurry to "upgrade" or install-from-scratch. My event logs show mostly all blue "info" nodes now.
INSIGHTS SOLICITED HERE!!
Some sources of "wisdom" -- like Maximum PC Magazine -- recommend OS reinstallation annually. Mostly -- I've gone longer than 3 years without doing so, and when done, it was more likely a choice to retire an OS like XP or VISTA. I think I'd done it once or twice for some particular system and particular OS during the last six or seven years. Mostly, I do regular maintenance, and may even think this has kept things "ship-shape."
Just not "ship-shape" enough until I started cleaning up the event-logs and rectifying these things I explained above.
I think I've eliminated the source of the problem -- one way or the other.
I turned my attention to the operating system. "was there ever any corruption?" "Do I need to do the "upgrade install" to keep my software and settings?" "Or should I simply reinstall the OS and go through the misery of installing an inventory of drivers and software?"
Some of my problems likely arose from immature hardware drivers, and all that has been dealt with. There are "red-bang" errors in my Windows event logs that have persisted almost since I built the computer, but I finally began to deal with them effectively. I'll get back to that in a quick second.
I ran the command-prompt "SFC /SCANNOW" to see if there was any corruption of the OS files. The CBS.log is extremely verbose, but after looking at it closely enough, there is only one "Cannot repair" error. It is not "corruption," but instead a "missing file:" MFC80.DLL.
This is a particular revision of the MFC80.DLL file -- version 8.0.50727.762. It is part of the Visual studio C++ redistributable -- not an OS component -- installed by software, or occasionally installed with the entire redistributable package.
There are two versions fo the C++ redistributable: a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. I may have downloaded the 64-bit version and installed it at some point to fix something, and I only vaguely remember. In these vague memories, I am pretty sure that I avoided installing or reinstalling the 32-bit version.
Otherwise, with software installations, several versions of MFC80.DLL (32 or 64) may reside together on the system, and the OS manages all those versions for benefit of the softwares that may need them. I somehow found the install-date for the missing version: it was 8-14-2011 -- three months after I built the system. Another piece of software had also been installed on that date: the nVidia System Tools that included nVidia Monitor -- which I don't need and don't use. I uninstalled it, but the SFC /SCANNOW results are still identical.
This doesn't seem to me to be any significant "OS corruption," and utilities like CHKDSK don't turn up any kind of HDD problem. Even so, I seem to have traced versions of MFC80.DLL to "red-bang" "SidebySide" errors on the event logs: most of the copy/versions of MFC80 are stored in an SxS subdirectory. And it may even be the case that the 32-bit version showing up in the SFC scans was related to Acronis Disk Director 11, but uninstalling that program didn't resolve the CBS.log result.
Instead, I got rid of all the red-bang SxS errors with the Acronis uninstall, and by allowing Nuance's "Common Software Manager" to "bother me" all the time with "upgrade" promotions for new software I don't need.
This left a couple red-bang event-log errors I'd been trying to resolve for a long time. One was a "COM" service error, such that the service could not start because of insufficient security privileges. I finally got that cleaned up through reassigning ownership and privileges in the "Component Services" feature of Windows.
This the component service at issue was the IPBusEnum service, which in turn -- affected a NetIO driver. Right away, I suspected I'd need to reinstall my network driver, and I did -- but not before getting a "0C2" BSOD stop error after committing the ownership and security changes. After reboot and reinstallation of the Intel version 18 network driver, this error has not repeated itself.
This leaves me wondering about the MFC80.DLL missing version.
Should I download and install the 32-bit C++ redistributable under my 64-bit Windows 7 OS? Should I ignore the MFC80.DLL anomaly? Is it time to start planning on either an "Upgrade" install of Windows or completely wipe the HDD clean to reinstall the OS, drivers and software from scratch?
One missing DLL file that doesn't seem to affect anything just seems insufficient justification for being in a hurry to "upgrade" or install-from-scratch. My event logs show mostly all blue "info" nodes now.
INSIGHTS SOLICITED HERE!!
Some sources of "wisdom" -- like Maximum PC Magazine -- recommend OS reinstallation annually. Mostly -- I've gone longer than 3 years without doing so, and when done, it was more likely a choice to retire an OS like XP or VISTA. I think I'd done it once or twice for some particular system and particular OS during the last six or seven years. Mostly, I do regular maintenance, and may even think this has kept things "ship-shape."
Just not "ship-shape" enough until I started cleaning up the event-logs and rectifying these things I explained above.
Facebook
Twitter