I have been trying to spin up another little test environment lately with LongHorn servers because I really need to start figuring out what is changing and making the joeware tools take advantage of the new features. This is actually a bit tough overall because my daily work has nothing to do with LongHorn and actually, on many days, I am happy to not work on Windows 2000[1]…
So you can imagine my dismay when I finally set some time aside to build some LongHorn servers in Virtual Server 2005 R2 and I keep getting DLL load errors (DLL missing or corrupt)Â when clicking on Install… I know the CD I was using was good because I loaded my DV8000 with the same CD just fine and it is running as a nice pretty Windows LongHorn Domain Controller as we speak.
So then I say… Ok, maybe Virtual Server is having issues with reading my CD Drive even though it never had those issues before… So let’s try an ISO, I tried 3 different ISOs, none worked.
Ok, well I was planning on loading the production version of VMWARE Server anyway to run my FreeBSD virtuals… So I load it and register it and it has the exact same error!!!! WTF.
So I email a bunch of friends and the responses all vary between two…
A. I haven’t loaded that version (Beta 2) in a VM, I have loaded older (or newer) versions ok though…
B. I haven’t had time to load the LongHorn Beta.
Then finally, I asked the right person!!! My good friend Princess Hoorhay responded while on vacation with an issue he had hit and said that it is probably the same thing…
The problem Jorge hit… He noticed that when he set the RAM to 256MB for the virtual machine for LongHorn, LongHorn would through corrupt or missing DLL error messages  when trying to load… However if he set RAM to 512 MB it would load just fine…
I was thinking… no, that is silly, that can’t be it… 60 seconds later, I had proven Jorge’s theory out, Virtual Server 2005 R2 was loading perfectly fine now… No corrupt or missing DLL errors… Now what a great error message that was. I wonder how many people just gave up on loading LongHorn when they hit that? BTW, the same “fix” works in VMWARE Server, it seems it is just a bad error message.
Once you have Longhorn loaded, it seems to work fine when you kick the RAM back down to 256MB.Â
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Oh for the search engines, the actual error message was
Windows Setup
The file xxxx.dll could not be loaded or is corrupt. Setup cannot continue. Error code is [126]
Where xxxx could be different file names. I recall seeing Wdsutil.dll as well as a WinSetup.dll.
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Hope this helps at least one person. 🙂
    joe
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[1] Yes Microsoft, a very large number of Enterprise class customers still run Windows 2000… Heck I am completely thrilled if I don’t see/hear any NT4 or Win9x…
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I am really, really tired of Microsoft errors, let me tell you. I’m up to HERE…!
Thanks for posting the fix. You’ve just made my day.
How did Jorge hit on solution? that would be something interesting know as well.
Joe,
I got the same error when trying to create a VM in Virtual PC. I was going around in circles until I changed the memory allocation from 256 to 512mb. After that , Longhorn installed with no problems.
What clued me in to the RAM was blog posting from another Longhorn user which stated that 512mb was recommended.
Arden
Joe
How does one findout what the new features available in LH are? Especially related to AD and surrounding technologies. Other than the RODC, I am not really sure what other blatantly new AD changes are available. Cant seem to find any beta docs either.
TIA
M@
Kamlesh: Maybe Jorge will blog something on it. He is on vacation right now, so maybe when he is back.
Arden: The recommendation is stronger than that, it is actually required it seems for the install.
Matheesha: Join the beta and look at the beta docs is about it and even that isn’t really details. MSFT still isn’t publishing a lot on what will hit LH AD.
The biggest things I can think of that has been sort of announced in conversations at DEC are Server Core DCs which are DCs without the Windows Explorer Shell and Media Center and IE, etc and being able to delegate local admin to to local site resources for managing an RODC. I know of some other things that I have been pinged on for my input but if I mentioned them I am sure I would never get to hear about anything else every again because that would be an NDA violation.
joe