Vista - userinit.exe failed to initialize after vm additions upgrade

Over the weekend, I upgraded my Virtual Server installation from 2005 to 2005
R2 SP1. The virtual server has 12 virtual machines on it. (They don't all
run 24x7.)

Of course, the Virtual Machine Additions were all out of date after the
upgrade. I don't think each VM was up-to-date before the upgrade, but I'm
not sure.

All but one of the virtual machines upgraded without a hitch. But one has
croaked and I'm desparate to fix it, rather than rebuild it.

The machine will start and give me a login dialog. After login, I get an
error from userinit.exe "The application failed to initialize properly
(0xc000142)." I've learned that this is caused by a DLL that is failing to
initialize. I can get complete the login by doing CAD, Task Manager, New,
Explorer. However, many Explorer functions, system utilities, and
third-party applications fail. Some of the errors are the same as the
initial error, some errors are completely different.

Unfortunately, I do not have a recent backup of the VHD. I have a backup
that is quite old, and after playing with it, I've discovered that this error
begins occurring immediately after uninstalling the VM Additions 13.552
currently installed on it. So I can't even try to recover using this backup,
because as soon as I try to update the additions, it croaks.

I'd like to accomplish any of the following, but in this order of preference:

- Fix whatever is causing userinit.exe, and hopefully the rest of the OS,
from failing in the "current" vhd. What is happening when the additions are
uninstalled that kills the OS?

- Find a way to upgrade the additions on the "old" VHD. I'm going to try
manually uninstalling the service, replacing the files in "C:\Program
Files\Virtual Machine Additions", and re-installing the service. This in
itself may croak the OS. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Worse case scenario, I'll use the "old" VHD and leave the 13.552 additions
on it. I'd prefer to update to 13.813. But that may not be an option.

Thanks
--
Jon Robertson
Borland Certified Advanced Delphi 7 Developer
MedEvolve, Inc
http://www.medevolve.com

Jon Robertson wrote:
Have you tried going back to the setup that worked, uninstalling the
additions, upgrade again, then install thee new additions?

> Have you tried going back to the setup that worked, uninstalling theI suppose you're suggesting to uninstall VS 2005 R2 SP2, re-install VS 2005,
and try removing the additions. No, I haven't tried and won't be trying at
this point. I was able to proceed with the VHD backup from February.

After starting this vm, I manually uninstalled the Additions services
(/uninstall switch on service .exe). Then I stopped the vm, mounted the VHD
in another vm that has 813 additions, copied the \Program Files\Virtual
Machine Additions folder containing 813 additions, dismounted the VHD,
restarted the vm, and then manually installed the Additions services
(/install switch on service .exe).

I've also mounted the "bad" VHD as a secondary drive in the vm and was able
to copy the data from the "bad" VHD to the February VHD. I think I'm up and
running with no loss.

I'd still love to know what the additions add to the "userinit" logic and
what uninstalling the additions did that rendered the OS so unstable.

--
Jon Robertson
Borland Certified Advanced Delphi 7 Developer
MedEvolve, Inc
http://www.medevolve.com