[gui-talk] O.T. Windows error involving Desktop and DLL something issueWi

[Charles Oppermann]

FYI, Windows will not reboot the machine out from under you after downloading updates.  There will be a prompt.

I know you've since resolved the problem, but you can check the event logs for the day the machine rebooted to find out what caused it to.

--Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 11:23 AM
To: GUI-Talk
Subject: [gui-talk] O.T. Windows error involving Desktop and DLL something issueWi

this seems to have started when the
surprising moment a few days ago (was it Microsoft's monthly Tuesday update
delivery, courtesy of my having set updating to automatic?) which, right
while I was working in Word or replying to email, rebooted my computer and,
sometime later, posted some sort of message saying it had had to do the
reboot to put into effect something vital that it had just changed in my
Windows.

At the time, I just shrugged; I'd been taking security updates, by one
method or another, for a long time, and never had the computer reboot itself
like that, rather than suggesting to me that I ought to reboot, voluntarily.

And all week, when I've  shut down my computer, here's what's been
happening. After the shutdown has begun (I forget now, but I think the
Windows shutdown theme music has already sounded at this point), there comes
one of those big hollowly coming  Windows error sounds, and Jaws reads me
just part of a message I never quite understand. It seems to be saying that
something involving DLL won't initialize because Windows is shutting down,
or something like that. Whereupon Windows proceeds to go ahead and shut
down, and, perhaps after a few seconds longer than usual, my monitor goes
dark (I'm partially sighted).

And the next time I start my computer, everything boots up, but what I get
when the process is finished isn't my familiar Windows Desktop, but a
light-colored screen that seems to be filled with text or something, though
I can't make out anything about what it might be, for lack of central
vision. But if I poke around with Jaws a little, I find a message that
Windows has demurred to load my Active Desktop because of, what, I don't
remember what it says. And it offers, among other controls, a button for
restoring the Active Desktop. After I press Enter on this, it asks me to
confirm that I really want to do this. I don't hear any message suggesting
why I might not want to, which isn't very informative for me. So I say Yes,
and there's my Desktop again. And the computer seems to function well enough
until I shut it down, whereupon the same thing happens as before.Now, I have
no idea whether my computer might have worked well enough without the Active
Desktop, if I'd just launched the applications I use with my hotkeys, as I
always do anyway. I hardly ever go to the Desktop for anything but the odd
little program for which I've never thought it worth the trouble of setting
a hotkey. But, because having the Desktop there seems what's right and
normal, I haven't experimented in that way. I just want to know what's the
matter.

Now, all I remember from messages I recently read on a Jaws list about
solving a DLL-related problem that sounded sort of like this (I don't know
what DLL stands for, by the way, that's
how out of it I am about this), is that they found their problem to have
been created by a Windows security patch that somehow played havoc with some
sort of "dashboard" that sounded as if it had to do with a scanner. Well,
I've got a MicroTek scanner, which I use kind of transparently,operating it
only by way of Open Book. I don't know of anything to do with a dashboard,
with or without magnetized plastic  religious figurines atop it. Sorry, old
rock and roll joke.

any helpful explanations and suggestions will be appreciated, on list or
off.
Joel

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