Part of Win98?

[Binder]

Whenever I defrag, I always shut down all background programs using ctrl alt del. Lately one of those programs, Rundll32, has been locking up my system when I try to shut it down.

My question(s) are...

1. Is this part of the OS ?

2. What exactly is it doing anyway?

3. Why would it be locking up my system when I try to shut it down?

Thanks,
Binder

[juppy]

Hi Binder,
I'm not real up on this but I do know a little. Yes, it is part of the OS. Rundll32.exe is the executable file that runs other functions of other .dll files. It basically goes into a .dll file and gets certain parts of it to run different things, depending on what program or application you are trying to use. I don't know why it would be locking your system other than maybe by shutting it down you are taking away the main "command giver" (for lack of a better word). Kinda like if someone took your legs away and then told you to walk. Taint' likely gonna happen. I know any time I have a program crash and I have to reboot that is always what comes up; something like "Rundll.exe has caused an error in..(memory address). Sorry if this is kinda vague but its the best I can come up with. Maybe someone else knows more about it.

[ZANEY123]

http://support.microsoft.com/default...EN-US;q138835&

read this,,,Is the error message the same?

[Binder]

Thanks for the quick replys! The analogy wasn't vague at all juppy, makes total sense to me . ZANEY, I get no error message when the system locks, the screen (including mouse) just freezes and I have to reset or turn off the machine to continue. I am going to check the system.ini file as directed in the knowledge base article. Thanks for the link!

Binder

[GaryRouth]

Hi Binder, and all

Here's another Knowledge Base link to Hanging Defragmenting:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q218160

. . . but I'm not sure that it's going to apply to your situation, since you don't hang starting Defragmenter, you hang trying to kill the Rundll32 process.

In your post you mention that this behavior has only started "lately" - so: earlier you were able to stop Rundll32 successfully, or perhaps you didn't see Rundll32 in your task list?

In any event, just as juppy explained, rundll32 is probably busy waiting for a reply, waiting to close something, . . . it's waiting for something that isn't happening, and voila - hangtime. I think rundll32 is a VisualBasic handy-dandy to let programmers start and stop all those ready-made subroutines that bring us dll hell. (hmm.. then again it might be C++. . . I can't remember)

I usually tell folks having trouble getting through defrag for whatever reason, to try and run it from Safe Mode - it's a little simpler, and usually works, and is often much much easier than determining what dll call is getting stuck where . . .

Might want to run ScanDisk, too, though - if you haven't in a while.

I should be asleep by now, so I'll stop typing and start snoring
Good Night
. . . Gary

[agreen]

I would recommand you do it in safemode so if you have any program that may be monitoring your system it won't run, also disable any screen savers you may be running