Vista – The dependency service or group failed to start
This was an error that has come up on some students’ computers. The problem was that it isn’t very specific so it’s insanely difficult to troubleshoot. But since the main problem along with that error was the internet not working that helped me figure out what to try.
Some people reformatted and that worked, some people did a system restore and that worked, others reinstalled SP1 and that worked. Based on the research I did today I couldn’t find any solution that worked for more than 1 or 2 people. I decided to use a stack repair to see if that would do anything. I hadn’t seen that in any of the forums I read but it was worth a shot since nothing else worked and I’ve used it in the past to fix connection problems. If it only worked on one of the computers I wouldn’t think much of it but it worked for both computers so here’s what you do:
- Go the start menu and type cmd in the search bar. Right-click on it and choose “
run as administrator“. - Now type
"netsh winsock reset"without the quotes and hit enter. - Next type, “
netsh int ip reset"once again without the quotes and hit enter. - Ignore it if it says that one of the repairs couldn’t be done and now restart the computer.
What this does is reset some configuration files and registry keys to their original state that are related to your computer knowing how to get online. Various things can corrupt them including viruses/spyware, installing some networking software, and I’ve read some programs that try to remove spyware/viruses can even corrupt them.
I’m not sure what the message saying a repair couldn’t be done was about because they were both able to get online afterward. I hope this helps some people because the forum posts I saw were pretty hopeless. One pattern I did notice was that a lot of people reporting this issue said that some windows updates had been recently installed.
I think something to look out for which may help you decide whether this will help is opening services.msc (type it in the search bar) and looking at the services that are supposed to automatically start. On one of the computers I noticed that the DNS Client and DHCP Client both were not running and gave me an error when I tried to manually start them; IPSec Policy Agent, Base Filtering Engine also were not running. The funny part about that error was that it was something like “A file that should never fail has failed to start.” Uhh… thanks?
If you end up trying this or finding something else that works please leave a comment, it would be good know.
Edit: I’m happy to see this is working for people. I know how frustrating something like this can be.
Update: In response to the comment from Matt, it sounds like the problem your computer is having is far more than just some services failing to start or some winsock & TCP/IP configurations being corrupted. I would be surprised if running those commands broke anything since all they do is reset some configuration files to their original working state. A virus could have corrupted a bunch of files on the computer including those mentioned in this post, so it was only one symptom of the problem. Sorry it didn’t work.
Works perfectly, thanks so much for the help.
Thank you so much! This was exactly what I needed!
i’d done with all the step that u recommend after restarting, still can’t found the bluetooth software,wireless software, internet connection cannot found and the dependency service or group failed to start command still appeared..can u help me??
Have you tried the other ideas on the post I linked to at the bottom of this one?
WORKS GREAT,YOU’RE A GENIUS!
Excellent, you made it so easy
Brother (or sister) you are brilliant…
Been over several sites trying to get a repair for this. The little part being left out on most sites with the same solution was “run as administrator” it will not work unless you do it that way.
Thank you so much for the advise. It solved my problem with the same message.
I got this error today after my VISTA auto-update installation failed halfway when my battery run out. After that, I cannot connect to any network.
I nearly wanted to reinstall VISTA. Well, I just got my VAIO repaired due to RAM error, and my IE got error if I visit sites that need Java. Tried to reinstall Java, but failed. Keep saying that the one of the file cannot be located etc.
So I thought it might be good to take the pain just to reinstall the VISTA if I cannot resolve the connection problem.
Very grate that your solution helped.
wow thank you so much!! I didn’t think I would ever find a solution~ you are awesome!
Many thanks! Vista has been kicking my butt this school year and I have about 30 users on campus. Network issues seem to predominate and this Gateway Tablet was begging for a factory re-image, but your sage advice saved the kid’s settings and all of the “stuff” that they had customized. Much appreciated!
Awesome it worked perfectly
i have problem when I go to Connect to, there is written can not find any window netwoks, then I create a new connection .. next .. next .. and click connect then there is written the wizard can not create connection…then I check services, such as remote acces auto Conection manager is stop,i can start the service,when i click start ,there is written error 1068 The dependency service or group failed to start..please help me
I’m assuming that you already went through the steps I posted here. If that’s the case then the next thing I would suggest would be to go to the post I linked to at the bottom of this one and follow those directions. If this is a recent problem, it’s probably easier to just do a system restore back to a time when you know it was working to see if that helps. Something else you would want to look at would be your device manager to see if anything shows up as not installed, usually by showing an exclamation point or question mark next to it. I don’t have a vista machine around me at the moment, but I believe you can type “device manager” (no quotes) into the search bar in the start menu. It doesn’t sound like that would be the issue to me, but it’s worth taking a look at anyway.
I fixed my parents’ connection problem with your solution tonight. Thank you VERY much! I tried it just from desktop screen at first, and nothing doing. Same balloon popped up complaining about the dependency group failure. ARG. Without getting all jerked out of shape, I decided to try it in safe mode: VOILA! Internet connection restored after restart.
I have to tell you after a week of google research, it was refreshing to see a well written explanation without ten flame posts following it to illustrate what an idiot you are. (YOU MOST DEFINITELY ARE NOT!!) Thanks again, you have found a permanent home in my bookmarks!!
Thanks man it worked for me also.
yup it Feckin Worked
Nice….
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! I have been working on this for 2 days!
Awesome, I can’t believe it worked.
This totally worked!!!! U realla r da best!!!!
thanks so much man u da best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just need to add my thanks.
Thank you thank you!
You’re a life saver. I tried a lot of things suggested in other forums and none worked. Your solution is simple and it worked perfectly. Thanks again!
thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it works perfectly!!!
thank You!
THANK YOU THANK YOU! My computer lost connection last weekend after a windows update, been fighting with it all week. Got all the network errors, dependency ground failed, etc. etc, but after much reading and searching i found your site, so i brought the info home and whalah!!! It worked!! So thank you, thank you! Your a lifesaver!!
Thanks again,
Chrisine
Thanks for that! works a treat
saved me a long time trying to troubleshoot … 
Thank you very much. it worked for me to.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….
This thing is just amazing!!!
Can’t even figure out why all the other forums never had this smart idea! For me it jux worked the magic i was looking for…
Thanks a lot pal…
DIDN’T WORK – GET THE ERROR IN A BALOON ABOVE THE NETWORK ICON IN THE TRAY. ANY SUGGESTIONS?
F.S.
Awesome –
It worked perfectly for my vista. Thanks a lot for posting the solution.
thank you! This worked perfectly!
Thanks,
Installed spyware terminator on my dads computer and after restarting the router had this error. But those commands fixed the issue
Fucking amazing…
God Bless you man.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH. T_T thank God I found this.. thanks a lot.
Thanks! It worked very well! I don’t see any of those errors anymore and the services are working!
wok’s good job
Hi,
After running the commands, I restarted, and logged on. When I click on the browser the blue screen showed for a couple of seconds then restarted again. This only happens when I open up the browser or other programs like lightroom. Thankfully, it doesn’t do this when I backup files to an external drive.
Is there anything I missed or should try?
Thanks
You can try checking to see if any system files are corrupted by opening a command prompt and typing sfc /scannow. That will check and attempt to repair any damaged system files. It sounds pretty bad if that blue screen of death comes up every time you open a program, you might eventually need to reformat. Try doing a system restore (start menu > programs > accessories > system tools > system restore) to restore the system files to a date before you started having problems. A system restore won’t touch your personal files, only the computer’s system files.
Here’s a link with a little more info on system file checker.
http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html
Thank you so much man I was so lost with out my pute. Dude I am on top of the world u brought life back to my Vaio. U R DA MAN!!!!!!!! Than You Sooo Much!
Dude it did work….pretty GENIUS
Cool++++
I love you.
ขอบคุณมากๆ เลยครับ
thank you so much i was having a bad day trying to fix this….you are awesome!!!
I totally love you! I thought this didn’t work at first, but it turned out that I didn’t read the post properly and forgot to run cmd as an administrator. When I corrected that and went through the process again, everything worked great – and my computer boots up much faster too! Thank you again
)
I would like to add my experience. It didn’t work and it took longer for my laptop to boot. I am not flaming the post, I just wanted to share my experience. I think there is no silver bullet for this kind of problem except of course, reformatting.
you are a genius. thank you.
Worked like a charm! Thank you very much for posting. This problem hit me a couple of days ago and it was REALLY a big pain. Thanks again!
LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE THERE’S A BIG “THANK YOU” FOR POSTING THIS INFORMATION IN THE WEB. IT REALLY HELPS IN A TREMENDOUS WAY SERIOUSLY.
Hey thank you my notebook has been unable to get online since the beginning of Jan!
Worked a treat on my son’s vista machine – many thanks.
Thanks, This VISTA has been a problem from day one
Matt,
Question for you. When I enter “netsh ip reset,” i get the following message “Reseting Interface, OK! A rebot is required to complete this action.”
Do you know what this means?
Thanks!
Who’s Matt?
Step 4 says to restart after submitting the command, that message is why. It’s telling you that the command completed successfully and that restarting the computer is necessary for the changes to complete.
Thank you so very much. This worked for my machine. Thank you for sparing me much stress and expense.
Thanks a lot. I was about to format the machine; you saved my time.
Thanks man! There was a computer in the office that was on the fritz and this fixed it.
Much appreciated.
Thank you, this worked for me too. Well done my friend.
Thank you soooo much. My dad is a computer programmer and he doesn’t work often with vista (obviously because no one does…) and we couldn’t figure it out. I think you just saved my academic career. Thank you
oh my god i spent 10 hours searching google to find this fix and this one person has saved me days of agony or a reformat thank you so much it worked perfectly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God there’s someone out there who knows what they’re doing. I have spent days trying to fix it. Man I owe you big time.
Thank you! You saved my day!!!!
thank you a bunch.. some of the infos i found in the net didnt worked..luckily i found this post..thank you so much..now my sister was very happy now.. thanks again
Hey thanks zillion
It workeddd!!!
Honestly THANKS!!! I did anything you can imagine, i replaced nlasvc.dll, i put a new lan adapter i put some things in the registry which i read them at another forum!!! It took something like 3 hours and finally i wrote these two commands and a miracle happened !!!
:D:D:D:D THANKS AGAIN!!!!
THANK U SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH IT WORKS REALLY.
thanks a bunch! I was just about to pay a lot of money to get this problem fixed. I followed your steps and it now works better than ever! Thanks a million!
Thanks for the help. Your steps just worked like a magic.
I wasted 8 hours but I had a hope that I would be able to fix this bug without re-imaging my machine. You proved I am right.
Thanks
Thanks for the help with the dchp error. I followed your steps and it worked perfectly. Your the man.
man thanx so much my computer guru
It did’nt worked for me. I can’t still connect to internet. Mabey you can help me.
thanks
Kaarel
This shit messed my computer up even more…I keep getting a blue stop screen and my computer just keeps restarting
Looked for the answer to my problem for what seemed like forever then came across this article. THANK YOU!
Thank you very much for your help, I read many topics but yours is the only one wich works !
Have a good year.
Pierrot the grateful french guy
MAN U R THE BEST!!!!! 10q
thank you so much! that helped out a lot!
Hey,
This actually worked. Awesome
This was really helpful.Now my system is fine.
Please provide me ur mail ID,just if i have any problem in future.
My Id is ravikumark_1@yahoo.com
Thanks one again
Thank You !!!!!!!!!
The commands fixed problem perfectly.
That worked perfectly!
Thanks Alot.
Awesome!!!!! it works
my laptop was down for the last few days & boy am i glad that i found ur link..it worked my laptop is working..i searched back to leave a +ive feed back here. thanks for sharing the tip.
This worked – Super thanks
omg i love you so much hahaha
it worked thanx a heap =]
That solution worked like a charm for me. I had that dependency error in vista and couldnt access internet. My pc was also long as hell to boot in vista (at least 4 min). After doing those 2 commands my internet came back and the pc now boots extremly fast. Thanks!!
Hi,
Much to my surprise, it worked. Thanks for this tip. I was desparately searching for a solution and landed here recently. thanks a lot.
Thank you very very much. After days of research on Google I can now go online with my Toshiba Laptop. Thanks for such a beautiful clue.