hmm, winsrv.dll is a windows file.
IMO the simplest solution would be to boot up from the xp cd, leave all partitions etc as they are & you should reach a screen asking if you want to do a fresh install or a repair install.
choose the latter. all your files should remain intact with all programs working.
good luck.

bacillus that would usually work except for the installation of SP2. I tried that route on 2 PCs to get rid of SP2. I was left with nearly none functioning PCs.

TO THE ORIGINAL POSTER

Boot form the XP CD and get into the recovery console. you can unistall SP2 from there. Just how I don't know but I have seen this posted on another site and responses that it worked.

Good Luck

 

Will it boot up in safe mode? If so, and you can find another computer running W-XP, that library file is found in C:\Windows\System32. Send it to a Floppy Diskette, put it into the floppy drive on the laptop while running under Safe Mode, open it and drag the file to the above location, and then drop it on the System 32 folder. Then try to reboot normally.

it you need the data, hook up the drive to a desktop as a secondary (slave) drive and copy all the stuff u need over to the other hard drive. Once completed put your old drive back and just format it and start again.

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@Ed C wrote:

bacillus that would usually work except for the installation of SP2. I tried that route on 2 PCs to get rid of SP2. I was left with nearly none functioning PCs.

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hmm, I didn't see any mention of having sp2 installed by the poster?

The tip-off was "I just got done downloading windows update". If the user has auto update turned on and has it set to install the update automatically SP2 is what got downloaded and installed and or even if he did it manually SP2 is the only critical update available.

I cannot get to the recovery mode due to not being able to boot up correctly; I haven't even been able to go to the safe mode.  How can I?

Every thing I found about this stop error pertained to windows nt; I have windows xp.

Ed C:

What's SP2? And how has it affected my system?

I have tried booting up with my XP CD but it goes back to this error message.  When going through the windows setup, it says that a file could not be found.

Please help!

You need to boot from the XP CD. You ned to either set the CD drive as the first boot device in the BIOS or hit the F12 function key when you see the Dell BIOS splash screen and select CD/CDRW/DVD as the boot device then watch for a ON SCREEN prompt to hit any key to boot from the CD drive, of course you need the XP CD in the CD drive.

If you are unable to boot from the CD drive or you get a error when booting from the XP CD you have other problems with your notebook.

 

SP2 is the latest service pack for Windows XP. It has caused many problems on certain PCs and or with PCs that have certain software installed. I did load SP2 on a C610, same as a i4100, for about 3-4 days and had NO real problems with it but I didn't like some of the FEATURE (read that bugs in my opinion) that were forced down your throat. So I tried the repair install method to take my PC back to XP with SP1 only and it was then the PC became nearly unusable. So I formatted the drive and reinstalled clean. But I did have backups of all my files and programs.

I would follow the advice given by chaistl. There are adapters for 2.5" Laptop Drives that allow them to be connected in a PC as a Slave Drive on a Standard 3.5" drive IDE Cable. You can access your LT drive that way to recover your files and data. It will require that you jumper your LT drive as a slave to do this. Once you have recovered your data to your PC's Document Folder or  CDR disk(s), then put your LT harddrive back in the Laptop(remove the jumper), delete the partitions on the drive and reinstall W-XP.