Windows XP Repair - Comments Page 1

At this point in XP's life cycle, a repair install might be more trouble than it's worth. I doubt that most people have an XP disk with SP3 on it even though most people have installed SP3. Same for the IE6 that comes standard with XP. Most people have upgraded to IE7 or IE8. Creating a slipstreamed disk is not for the faint of heart.

Even if you have the required slipstream disk, or if you're using an older XP w/SP1 or SP2 and IE6 that came on the install disk, Microsoft warns of additional problems that could surface. Specifically, not being able to access required updates.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943144

The fixes given by Microsoft are not all inclusive. You might have to re-register all of the following regsvr32 files:
wuapi.dll
wuaueng.dll
wuaueng1.dll
wucltui.dll
wups.dll
wups2.dll
wuweb.dll

I speak from experience. The first time I tried a repair install I did not have a slipstreamed disk and I failed to remove SP3 and IE7 before starting the repair. I wound up having to do a reformat and clean install anyway to fix the added issues that cropped up. As it turned out, I was glad I did the clean install. My machine had the speed and feel of being factory new.

Hi, Yesterday I had an unusual problem - Windows Media player Version 11 wouldn't open and IE favourites were blank; I tried to uninstall Version 11 to rollback to a previous version but kept getting error because another program was open (nothing was open); I rebooted, was able to uninstall , rebooted again and IE favourites reappeared!
Perhaps other subscribers could give their weird experiences as well for all to read.
Regards,
Michael

I had a continued troubles with error messages and the "have to end program for no reason BS"...system restore helped sometime..Eventually I went to computer restore..It's just almost like taken it back out of the box when it was purchased ..I did get some programs back and it's quicker than this earthquake ridden Vista right now!

I have been having problems with XP and Internet access.
I was using Firefox as my browser until it started telling me it did not have internet access
I switched back to IE and that is working
At the same time I could not update AVG or Zone Alarm. I have deleted these and now can't download them again. I also tried downloading Google Chrome, denied.
After reading your recent article I installed MSE, appears to work fine.
I do not want to do a complete XP reinstall.
Is there anything you can think of that I might have installed that simply blocks competitor
products? I have run CCleaner and MSE.

Thanks, MikeD

Bob, Can I buy a cd with a program on it to clean my hard drive......to get rid of files that I've deleted. Thank you.

EDITOR'S NOTE: See http://askbobrankin.com/clean_hard_drive.html

Follow up to my question of a few minutes ago:

I have been using Majic Jack until 2 weeks ago when it also told me I had no Internet connection
I spent 3 hours on a chat line with them until I was cut off. This is my only phone access and the most pressing of the things I have been denied

Thanks, MikeD

You mention chose XP in the article. This OS appears to be close to burial, according to Microsoft. Do you have anything as to how to do the same thing for Vista, or Win7.

After I thought I successfully eliminated a trojan horse using a malware application I was instructed to restart my computer. Now when I attempt to log in to Windows XP the computer logs me in and immediatley logs me off again. This happens when I log in with any of my three users, none of which are password protected. The same thing happens if I start up in safe mode.

A couple of weeks back I went right through the whole XP Repair process without a hitch - until I came to reboot the new installation. Total failure. Fortunately I have another couple of hard drives in my machine, one which contained a total back-up of the C drive (accessible via a recovery CD). But my system is still doing odd things and I'm reluctant to reformat and reinstal.

I also find myself in the situation mentioned by Dave on my old XP machine. After my Anti-Virus software was able to remove the infamous Internet Security 2010 malware, I too was instructed to do a restart to complete the process. The Owner and Administrator accounts now login and then logout; booting into Safe Mode yields the same result. I'm beginning to believe another machine may be required to fix this problematic XP machine or that an alternate OS boot might allow for repairs so that the I could login to it? Perhaps an alternate OS should simply be selected for use from this point forward? Restoring XP seems to have limited value. I'm open to suggestions on how to proceed. Thanks!

An unbelievably quick and easy fix that has worked for me several times after a hard drive failure consists of simply opening the side of the desktop tower and unpluging the hard drive for a minute or so and then plug it back in. This actually worked for me after recently getting the "blue screen of death." Always remember to first remove your power cord from your tower and discharging any static electricy before placing your hands onto or near to any internal components of your computer.

Recently my computer would not boot into Windows XP. I did however manage to boot into Safe Mode (pressing F8 during the bootup) and selected Last known successful configeration (I think thats what it was called)and my computer booted successfully after that.

I then ran sfc /scannow just to be on the safe side.

my xp repair procedures
I start with free edition of the following programs
1. ccleaner clean the registry and hard drive
2. malwarebytes antivirus
3. superantivirus
4 spybot also go to advance and check for inconstancy
5 avira anti-virus free edition

if the problem is you cant boot try all of them in safe mode first then run run in main mode.

also sometimes file do get corrupt and you need to run chkdsk to fix your hard drives

PLEASE don't point to that MBR page on MS.. It goes from PC DOS 5 to Windows ME... ONLY !!! It is badly out of date

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not sure what you mean. This article doesn't have any links to MS pages. Which MBR page do you mean?

Good day Bob, Your newsletters have been excellent of late. Red Bull?
I bought an Iomega 500GB exterior HDD and used SyncToy to back-up my entire OS. My question is: SyncToy is "read only" is it not, so is a sync really a back-up, and how is it used? Can you please explain how sync back-ups work please to repair an XP OS? Many thanks Bob.

Sir, I am getting some different message when I boot pc. It reads "Windows cannot find 'C:\Documents @ settings\Rajan|kdlvwy.exe' Make sure you typed the name correctly & try again " Here I donot find such file when search was applied.What does this suggest?How to fix it?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like a virus-related issue. If you recently removed malware, this might happen. If not, then run a good anti-virus and anti-spyware scanner. See http://askbobrankin.com/free_antivirus_programs.html

I have found that taking an image of the affected drive, that won't boot, will allow you to get any data you want from it. And it does appear that any viruses contained in the image do not affect your system until you copy them from the image. You should run malware scans on any data you pull from the image and place on your rebuilt drive. I have done this many times and not had any troubles yet.

Please help me fix my windows installer. I have tried the Installer Repair Program by Microsoft and guess what it won't let me install because it uses the Windows Installer(Duh). I have tried replacing it and that did not work either. Any suggestions???? Thanks..

i ccan't install microsoft security essentials!al that i get is error 0*80070643

After massive trojan invasion (despite installed firewall & anti-virus suite) of Windows XP Media Center Edition, then removal of virus by malware program, was unable to connect to internet. Unfortunately I never created a recovery disc and have only a "reinstall" OS disc. Tech consultant was unable to correct problems, so first tried "repair" install & it reinstalled Windows but froze at application 16 or 76. So then did "clean" & it did the same thing. However, tech consultant then started Windows,applied all Windows updates (including SP3) but now components are missing, such as MSWorks which came installed originally, and computer doesn't "go to sleep" when idle. Probably others too that I haven't found yet. Any way to fix without starting all over again? (He set me up with Open Office(ok for docs, but missing some MSWorks format options)and installed a bunch of other things such as popup block, AVG, Firefox (with addons including NoScript), Open Office, Spybot.