Problem accessing User Accounts

Hi - my first post in these forums.

A few days ago when uninstalling a few redundant applications, one of them messed up my XP Home system, although not to the extent of me not being able to use it.

By working through some of the issues the uninstalled app left behind, I have managed to solve some of the problems largely by re-registering some dll's. I thought I had got everything back together as it should be, but today found I couldn't access User Accounts (by any route), receiving an error when I try that says, "Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment ".

I have administrative privileges so it is not an issue of permissions.

I then found out some information about the sfc utility and ran a sfc /scannow from the Run menu. It took a long time trawling through and finally came up with an error saying:

The things is, I do not have an XP Home Edition Service Pack 1 CD. My original XP installation was supplied on the computer from new and since then I have kept it up to date (including SP1) by downloading from the internet using the standard automated Windows Updates.

I assume from the message that sfc gave me that I need these files, but without access to an SP1 CD how can I get them and also how can I find out what they are?

Any ideas or help on this would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks PeteC for your reply and thanks for your welcome!

Suggestion 1 is not a possibility as the message doesn't give you the option to browse to another location.

I could try suggestion 2, but cannot find SP1 available online, only SP1a which is here. Would it be OK to install that instead? If so, do I go for the Express Installation option?

Thanks.

PS. By the way, I've just had a look at your website. Your monochrome images are simply fantastic. I've done a bit of photography myself over the years and more recently digital video, but nothing in the same league as yours. Absolutely brilliant.

 

Pete - thanks for the info about SP1a.

The Express installation ran through finally after I got a "Service Pack 1 setup canceled" error. I was able to resolve this by re-registering a couple more dll's (Licdll.dll and Regwizc.dll) that presumably had been unregistered by this maverick application during its uninstall.

However, when trying to access user accounts again it hit the same error. I then re-ran sfc /scannow and this time it ran through to the end without requesting the SP1 CD, so it looks like whatever was previously identified by sfc was updated by the SP1a installation - thanks for that.

So, any more ideas, Pete or anyone else?

I have been wondering whether there are other dll's requiring re-registering as all the fixes I've made so far (i.e. as above and with other problems I've resolved) have as far as I can remember been achieved by doing just that.

That said, I would have thought that the SP1a installation would have done all that, but perhaps it only updates files which have been downgraded and doesn't check for dll's that are not registered which should be.

Is there a list of dll's required by XP (maybe it's too extensive) or better still, what dll's are required by certain processes such as user accounts. Alternatively, is there a way of checking for XP dll's that exist but are not registered?

As a last resort, maybe a repair install of XP is the only option. However, I'm reluctant to do that as (1) I've never done one (2) I'm wondering if the Mesh recovery CD supplied with my PC being OEM is up to it and (3) I don't want to cause more problems.

As I've said, any help would be much appreciated.

PS. PeteC - I know it's off topic, but I'm interested to know how you produced the great moody landscapes, especially the skies in your photographs. Was this in a "digital" darkroom or by using red filters and monochrome negative/positive film and conventional post-processing?

 

Thanks Pete - flip I didn't realise there were so many!

As you suggested, I think I will sit tight to see what others might suggest. Thanks for your help though.

Thanks as well for the info on your photography. My first job (nearly 30 years ago) was processing monochrome films in a photo-processors. I didn't enjoy that much slamming 35mm cartridges against the wall to pop the spool out of the canister. I then migrated to monochrome printing using a conventional enlarger although by that time they had moved the development of the prints over to using a Veribrom processor. I then went on to work for a private studio doing it properly with dishes. I wish I'd developed (excuse the pun) further, but moved out of the profession into other things, only to do it as a hobby. Little time now with a young family means it isn't even that. Maybe when the kids are older and I have more time, I'll return to it in more depth. Thanks though for some great photography.

I'll avoid going off topic again - promise!

 

I have not yet tried this with XP but it works for both Win98 and ME and I see no reason why it won't work with XP. If it doesn't, all you have to do is go back and change things back to the way they were.

1. Go to the Start menu, select Run, and type in "regedit" (without the quotes), click OK. This will launch the Registry Editor.
2. In the left pane, open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SETUP.
3. In the right pane, scroll down till you see SourcePath. Double-click on it.
4. Change the path (i.e., "D:\" which is all that's there in my XP Home) to your own setup directory (i.e., C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\). Note: You must have the backslash at the end of your path.
5. Close regedit

Run SFC again. If it doesn't look in the C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 folder for what it needs, go back and put the registry entry back the way it was.

 

Yup. Same exact registry location and key name in XP. Should work.

Anastasis - make sure you use the actual path on your PC to the I386 folder. It should be what Miz said but possibly something else.

 

Miz & Newt - thanks for your posts. Apologies for not replying earlier, but I haven't been able to return to the computer until very recently.

I tried this, setting SourcePath as suggested and re-ran SFC. This time the result was different in that a short way into the scan it game up with another message saying:

I inserted the Mesh CD which came with the PC. Although it is their proprietary recovery CD it appears to contain a copy of XP and pressed Retry. It seemed happy for a while and then popped up with the same message dialog and again and again and again, probably over 100 times in total. All of this time the Windows File Protection progress bar was moving nearer its end, but it was slow progress.

Once it had been completed, I tried User Accounts again and.... same error.

Any more thoughts? Thanks.

 

Dang - this one is a toughy.

Try it again to get a fresh failure notice and then start~run~eventvwr.exe and check your event logs for errors/warnings that look related. Hopefully there will be one or two there with more information. Probably the system log but could possibly be something in the application log as well.

When you find it/them, double click the event open, click on the icon below the up/down arrows to put a copy in your clipboard, and paste it in a reply here.

 

Thanks Newt for your reply.

I have checked Event Viewer for the procedure I carried out for this last night. It shows no errors or warnings between the time it started:

and was stopped:

No errors or warnings either in the application or security logs.

The only error or warning being reported over the last couple of days is in the system log as follows:

I saw this a few days ago and after investigating found it was something to do with MSN Messenger and that it was causing slow start up of Outlook Express. I amended the registry settings InProcServer32 and LocalServer32 to empty strings as was suggested which fixed the slow start up of OE. However, from time to time in the system log the error above is still being reported.

I couldn't find anything else to report. Thanks for your help.

 

You speak of trying to get into the user accounts section and
today found I couldn't access User Accounts (by any route), receiving an error when I try that says, "Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment ".
That really should be generating event log entries.

To make life a little simpler, empty all the event logs (and no need to save a copy) then do whatever you do to trigger the above error and check the logs again. Interesting if you still aren't trapping detail on that error.

Just to clarify, do you get the error if you right-click My Computer, left click Manage, expand Local Users and Groups, and then try to click open the Users folder?

 

Hi Newt - Yes, that's correct all routes into User Accoutns I have found about and tried have resulted in the same error. This has been via:

• Start->Control Panel->User Accounts
• Start->Run->control userpasswords
• Start->Run->NUSRMGR.CPL

The resulting error is shown as, "Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment" which is displayed immediately after the User Accounts window becomes visible but is empty. I can try to show it here - does the forum let you post jpg's?

I tried what you suggested, clearing all 3 logs and then the first of the above routes to User Accounts. No error was shown in any of the logs (and that was after I refreshed each of them.

I then tried the suggestion to use My Computer->Manage etc, but cannot find the option to expand Local Users and Groups - this is not in the left-pane. I expanded everything on the left, but could not find this option. Again, I can post a screenshot if it is possible, but I also tried getting this by using lusrmgr.msc and it tells me the Local Users and Groups snapin is not available in XP Home.

It is very weird. As I mentioned before, (although I'm no expert on these things) I have a nagging suspicion that some dll's have be unregistered. Is there anyway to tell what dll's are linked to the User Accounts process? Just a hunch - nothing more.

 

Sorry about the Local Users and Groups. I never use XP-home and this is evidently one of those things that are different home vs. pro.

You can only post pics here if you subscribe to the forum.

At this point I am pretty well out of ideas and it looks like no one else here has any either. Not to run you off but give a try at one of the Microsoft XP newsgroups you find from the link on their online help section.

http://support.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx and expand Windows then expand XP. Then to the Performance & Maintenance group and a search for Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment. I tried it and turned up some hits that are not VBscript related. If none of them look likely, post your specific problem there.

If they have any answers for you, please post back since I'm curious about this one.

 

Thanks Newt for the referral. I've had a scout around on the MS newsgroups and done a search, but couldn't find anything in particular.

I have also followed through on my hunch about it being a dll issue and found a freeware dependency walker tool which can profile a running application.

By profiling control.exe with a command line parameter of userpasswords (which mimics running user accounts from the control panel), I was able to find the point where user accounts comes up with the error. This is the line in the profile immediately preceding the error:

As a result, I'm most suspicious of the MSHTML.DLL which is making the function call into OLEAUT32.DLL. Both of these dll's are registered OK, but one thing I noticed about MSHTML.DLL is that the filename is capitalised in the Windows\System32 folder whereas other DLL's have lowercase filenames. I imagine this could be because another app overwrote the original dll during an install.

This is only a hunch, but I wonder if it has been down dated. The version number of this dll is 6.0.2800.1400. I would be grateful if others with Windows XP could check the version number on their system, stating also if they are running XP Home or Professional.

Just one other thing the executable showing in the profiler that is running at the point of the error is mshta.exe, so I guess that could also be involved.

Of course with all of the above, I could just be going up a path to nowhere, but I thought it was worth following this through.

Thanks all.

 

Same OS. Same version for the current file and upper case name in both system32 and system32\dllcache.

The version in my $NtServicePackUninstall$ folder is 6.0.2716.2200 and lower case name.

 

Hmm! Thanks guys. No significant differences there then. Looks like I'm increasingly having to snatch at the proverbial straws with this!

One other thing I've discovered with my setup is that the normal blue search panel (accessed via Start->Search) has been replaced by a white panel with no dog (some would say hurrah!). It looks like the search panel used in Windows 2000. I've not elected to make any change with this, so something has changed it. Maybe this is a clue to the other more important error I'm getting?

I will continue to scout around for answers for the time being, but one question. As I mentioned before, I only have a recovery disc supplied with my system. Although, it has Windows XP on it, I am a little nervous of using it for a repair install. If I could find a friend with a non-OEM version, would my system see this as a legitimate version? Also, (a second and third question), what are the implications of a repair install - is it right that all installed apps remain in place? What would I need to reinstall after doing the repair install? Any advice about this procedue (which I'm reluctant to do but may have no other option) would be appreciated.