flash.ocx not being registered - setup reboot loop

[MikeHersee]

Hi,

I had a sudden motherboard failure, and have obtained a spare motherboard. I have some spare older hard drives, one of which has a previous incarnation of my current XP Home installation running on an even older motherboard before I previously moved it to my bigger hard disk and the motherboard that just failed.

I had lost my original XP Home disc that if I recall correctly was an OEM one anyway so bought a fresh one, Dell OEM with SP2. I used Nlite 1.4.9.1 to slipstream an SP3 version with absolutely no other alterations. I tested it doing a 'repair installation' on my very old XP Home hard drive and it worked perfectly and boots properly and can be used, although I've not registered it yet as I don't intend to on that old drive.

I then used the same slipstreamed disk for repairing the installation on my recent / current hard drive from the failed motherboard. It reached 'configuring components', '9 minutes to go', with the green progress bar right up to the right hand side, and then the screen goes black for about 15 seconds while there is a lot of disk activity, and then it reboots and 'setup is restarting' - 39 minutes to go. This loop repeats endlessly.

When I found out about the setuperr.log I found the repeated cycle is:

***

Error:

Setup encountered an error while trying to set system security.

An extended error has occurred.

***

Error:

An error occurred while compiling the following MOF file: C:\PROGRAM FILES\MICROSOFT SQL SERVER\100\SHARED\SQLMGMPROVIDERXPSP2UP.MOF Please refer to C:\WINDOWS\system32\WBEM\Logs\mofcomp.log for more detailed information.

***

Error:

Setup could not register the OLE Control C:\WINDOWS\system32\macromed\flash\flash.ocx because of the following error:

DllRegisterServer returned error 2147647516 (8002801c).

***

It appears the fatal error is being unable to register the flash.ocx control, but whether that is connected to the previous two errors I don't know. The technical explanation for the flash error is that it doesn't have permission to update the registry keys, but I don't know which ones or why.

I've tried creating another setup disk with Nlite using the latest flash addons and it made no difference. I've seen one topic here that suggested it may be a problem with some flash-related intaller or updater corrupting permissions on registry keys, but it wasn't quite the same problem. I've seen that several other people have said elsewhere they've had a similar problem - most appeared to have given up and reinstalled from scratch. But I have a large number of programs installed and configured and I really, really, really don't want to go down that route. There must be some way of overcoming this problem.

I've had a go at resetting registry entries using BartPE with a batch file and subinACL as suggested by Microsoft for a similar problem but (and I'm not an expert) it appears to be resetting a temporary version of the registry. I've been unable to confidently make change to the registry manually due to confusion about how it's working and how to load the right bit of registry or the instructions not coinciding with what happens, or whatever. Plus my thinking now is that because setup is now restarting from scratch each time it may be resetting bits of the registry even if I had updated permissions successfully.

What are the dangers of just removing that flash.ocx file? or what else might I need to do to to safely remove it, bearing in mind that because setup is in the middle I can't boot into that drive (but I have a spare XP Pro drive to host it with as a slave).

Some people have said, "You can't do it with a Dell install disk", but I already have - but on an installation that actually might not have had flash on, it's so old.

Any thoughts at all would be gratefully received and I'll report back any progress made and how I eventually get round it.

As Freddie Mercury sang; "I'm going slightly mad"

Mike Hersee

[jaclaz]

Check this ONLY seemingly unrelated thread:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15138

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15138&st=29

It sounds a lot like you need to use SUBINACL on (a copy of ) your source files.

jaclaz

Edited October 15, 2011 by jaclaz