in reply to: http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/47808.html The case was: When starting lots (>100 sometime >1000) processes, the same (correct running application) can not start anymore with error 0xc0000142. I also have seens this problem. I am not sure, but the error seems to happen somewhere in ntdll.dll during the initalization of the default linked librarys (0xc0000142 = dll init failure, mostly when linking the worng librarys) But in the described situations this is not a wrong dll, but ntdll is not able to initiliaze the dll, because the init part of the dll throws an error. In my case this is often (but not always) the wsock32.dll/ws2_32.dll. I think there is a memory/handle/socket shortage will will be not reported correctly from Windows NT/2000. On Windows 2003 I was able to start more than 10 times of the application. Windows 2000 less than 200. With crss fix less than 500. On Windows 2003 (without the crss band-aid) >3000. The Windows 2003 reported, that there are not more socket available (and thats correct). So it seems to be that this is an error in Windows NT (SP6) _and_ Windows 2000 (SP4). let me know if somebody knows the solution (delete .nospam and .delete from e-Mail Address) Markus