EricT

I've always been one to let Windows Update do it's thing, except I (try to) control the when...

7:30 This morning Windows Update had 3 fixes for me, and I've installed them.  WUS wanted me to reboot, but before I did so, I also installed the new Symantec Endpoint Protection, an upgrade of Symantec Client Security.  After this second install, I rebooted the machine.

8:00 After the reboot all .NET programs stopped functioning.  On the .NET 1.1 front, there's now a pop-up showing:

CLR Error: 8007000b.
The program will now terminate.

On .NET 2.0 the programs just don't start.  No complaints, nothing.

I've tried System Restore to before the Symantec Install, but after the obligatory reboot it just told me that it couldn't backup to the previous System Restore point.

The code 8007000b means that an executable image (.DLL or .EXE) is corrupt.  The actual code description is Bad Image Format Error.  So I wrote a quick DOS script that iterates through all DLLs in the c:\windows folder and subfolders and calls depends.exe in command-line mode and dumps the status out to stdout, which I redirected to a file.  I figured maybe I'll find a DLL that is corrupted.  Instead it got hung up in some video driver DLL because my primary screen stopped cold, but the secondary still worked (go figure).  Had to reboot to get out of that mess.

It's been 4 hours now of tinkering around to try to get my machine working again. 

13:50 I've now un-installed .NET 3.0, .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1.  Then rebooted.  Just tried re-installing .NET 1.1, re-install failed with error 0x643.

 15:00 Contacted Microsoft Tech Support, and plunked my $69.-- CDN down for help.  The dude who came on with web-chat was a fast typer, asked to connect directly onto my computer using EasyAssist, a kind of VNC but more targeted towards tech support calls.  Kind of cool actually.  Except I had to remove hardware graphics acceleration, and reduce my screen size from 1920x1200 to a measly 1024x768.  I also had to disable the Symantec Endpoint Protection software.  He then connected and did a bunch of wonderful things (including calling a Install Cleanup utility downloaded from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301 and a dotnetfx_cleanup_tool utility from http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/04/08/406671.aspx , left column half-way down).  He also disabled three services that seem to make up Windows Update to rename two directories (C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and I forget the other) that seem to be critical for Windows Update.  After re-enabling the three services he tried to re-install .NET 1.1, with the same effect of not working.

16:15 He also tried installing .NET 3.0 and that worked.  Somewhere during all this something (one fo the cleanup tools) wanted me to reboot, so we decided that maybe the .NET 1.1 wouldn't install because we hadn't rebooted yet.  I recorded my session ID with the fella from Tech Support so I can contact him after the reboot.  I then disconnected the web-chat and the Easy-Assist and proceeded to reboot.  Upon reboot the Service.exe programs of course still didn't work, because they need .net 1.1, but what was much worse is that Symantec Endpoint Protection crashed as well.  And I had set it up so that networking was not allowed until Symantec was up and running.

16:30 The dude from Microsoft called me to figure out why I hadn't resumed the web-chat, which I of course couldn't since my networking was now out of commission.  He suggested I uninstall Symantec Endpoint Protection.  I started this, but that failed as well (just hung).  In the meantime he kept asking me to connect to web-chat; I don't think he understood that my network system had failed (his English typing was better than his english speaking / understanding).  We had to quit at 17:00 because I had family things to attend to; the saga continues tomorrow...