Every once in a while, a giant antivirus company will make a huge mistake by flagging a very important file as a threat. As far as I know, Kaspersky once detected explorer.exe as a virus and quarantined the file making the entire Windows desktop, system tray and start menu to disappear! Many years ago, Norton too detected Flash Player as a trojan called PWSteal. Now, it is AVG’s turn to do that. Three days ago AVG detected a critical legitimate Windows file user32.dll as a trojan horse Generic9.TBN.

If you trust your antivirus program too much and quarantined the file, you’ll find that your computer unbootable when the next time you try to start up your computer.

You will end up with an endless loop of reboot with the error “STOP: c0000135 {Unable To Locate Component}. This application has failed to start because USER32.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem“.

For an advanced computer user, fixing this is pretty easy if they have a Windows installation disc, Windows PE disc or Linux LiveCD with them. Just boot in to recovery console and copy the backed up USER32.dll file from \WINDOWS\system32\dllcache to system32 folder. Boot up the computer, AVG should again detect user32.dll as trojan but this time choose ignore. Update the virus signature and the nightmare is over.

This is probably a little old by now but I thought of posting this fix because I got an email from Peter who resides in Belgium requesting me to write a step-by-step on how to fix this problem when the user don’t have a Windows installation disc. Otherwise he’ll have to send it to a local computer store that charges 50 euro to fix this problem.


You’ll need to have access to another computer to download the fix from AVG and burn it to a CD or USB flash drive. If you only have one computer, borrow your friend’s computer or go to your cousin’s place to do it. It’s better than wasting the 50 euro to fix this small problem.

If you’d like to use a USB flash drive (pendrive) to fix the problem. For this to work, the computer that you’ll be fixing must support USB boot function.
1. Click HERE to download this file.
2. Backup all files in USB flash drive. Extract the rescue_en.zip file and copy everything to the root of your USB flash drive. It’d look something like the image below.

3. Run makeboot.bat file and press any key to continue.
4. Connect the USB flash drive to the affected computer and restart the computer. It should boot up from the USB flash drive. If not, please see the user’s manual for you motherboard to find out how to let the computer boot from a USB flash drive.

If your computer is quite old and doesn’t support booting from USB, then you’ll have to use the CD method.
1. Click HERE to download the ISO image.
2. Burn the ISO image to a CDR by opening the ISO image. Don’t burn as file. Refer to this article on how to burn ISO images to CD.
3. Insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive of the affected computer and restart the computer. It should boot up from the CD. If not, please see the user’s manual for you motherboard to find out how to let the computer boot from a CD.

By completing the steps above, Windows should be able to boot up. WAIT! You’re not done yet! There are a few more steps required in order to fix AVG false detection.

1. Once Windows has successfully booted up, update the AVG program (Open AVG User Interface and click the “Update now” button)

2. Go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab > UNCHECK Hide extensions for know types.

3. Go to AVG program folder, by default should be in C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8 and rename the file “avgrsx.exe_off” to “avgrsx.exe”.

4. Then rename another file “avgsched.dll_off” to “avgsched.dll”.

That is all. Pat yourself at the back because you’ve fixed the missing user32.dll problem caused by AVG false detection problem. Go buy yourself a nice meal with the 50 euro 🙂