Kernel thread terminated while holding a mutex

[jdarwin]

I tried searching on "MUTEX" but could not find much.

I'm trying to assist a friend with his wife's Dell Deminsion 4700 running XP Media Ctr w/ SP3.

He got the following msg. "kernel thread terminated while holding a mutex"

Now the PC hangs at Windows start up. We can get it to boot in safe mode (build 2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.100216-1514:service pack 3).

The PC didn't come with an OS disc. If we have to reinstall (don't want to do this) we must use the Dell PC Restore on the D: drive.

Can someone tell me what to do? We tried a system restore to an earlier working date but had no success. Thanks for reading this.

UPDATE: I turned off system restore and got the following error... "instruction at 0x7c9101b3 referenced memory 0x004a195acound not be written". I hope this helps.

 

[Tmagic650]

Try doing an XP repair:
XP Repair Instructions

There also could be a hardware failure such as bad memory or a corrupted/bad hard drive

 

[jdarwin]

I ran a HDD check. It was OK. How do I test memory?

 

[Tmagic650]

Memory Testing instructions

 

[jdarwin]

The memory test showed no errors. Any other ideas?

 

[Tmagic650]

Yes, do an XP repair as outlined earlier