Badly-behaved 16-bit Application Prevents System Shutdown

ID: Q126032

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 3.5
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 3.5

SYMPTOMS

A badly-behaved 16-bit application may prevent Windows NT from shutting down cleanly. Once the application misbehaves and you attempt to shut down Windows NT, the shutdown may halt or hang, and it may be necessary to physically turn off the power to the computer to regain use of Windows NT.

After requesting a shutdown, a dialog box with the application's name in the title bar appears stating that the Windows application cannot respond to the end task request. The dialog box presents three choices: Wait, End Task, and Cancel.

If you choose End Task, after a period of time, a similar dialog appears with WOWEXEC in the title bar.

If you select End Task again, the shutdown will never complete, and at this point your computer is unusable:

CTRL+ALT+DEL has no effect.

CTRL+ESC has no effect.

ALT+TAB task switching still works, but is not useful.

The choices available with ALT+TAB at this stage will probably be limited to the bad application and Program Manager. The bad application is still hanging. If you attempt to run other applications from Program Manager, they may fail to start with or without reporting errors. The following errors may appear:

DLL INITIALIZATION FAILED
D:\winnt35\system32\comctl32.dll failed
The process is terminating abnormally.

-OR-

DLL INITIALIZATION FAILED
D:\winnt35\system32\kernel32.dll failed
The process is terminating abnormally.

At this stage it is necessary to turn off your computer.

WORKAROUND

Run the 16-bit application in its own memory space. This may enable a clean shutdown to take place when the application misbehaves, but may not be a suitable workaround if installed memory is limited on the computer experiencing the problem.

For more experienced users, you can suggest using PVIEWER.EXE from the Windows NT Resource Kit to perform a Kill Process on the associated NTVDM when the application misbehaves. This should succeed in removing the bad application, but it will also forcibly terminate all other applications running in the same VDM.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 3.5. This problem was corrected in Windows NT version 3.51.

Additional query words: prodnt 3.50

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