C:\W98XUNDO.DAT plus MS Power Toys

I have a couple of problems with my new computer. A month after receiving it with everything installed, on 4/7/04 it booted up with a blank screen and instead of going into Safe mode and restoring it to a previous date (live and learn) I re-installed Windows ME on top. Now I have 4.5GB on my hard disk which more or less equates to the 3GB I had on my previous W98 computer. One contributing culprit has to be the hidden file C:\W98XUNDO.DAT file dated 4/7/04 which is 780MB.. What is it and can it be deleted?

Later in a fit of enthusiasm I loaded ‘MS Power Toys’ and after re-booting got a warning headed RUNDLL - “Error in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\Shell.Ext\target.dll Missing entry, CD Play Notify”. I posted it on Google and a subject article cited the problem as being ‘Power Toys’, which it said was intended for W95 only. Thus the inferrence was to delete it. Before doing so I added the words “CD Play Notify” in the “target.dll” file. At the next re-boot this resulted in the same warning except after target.dll it said “A device attached to the system is not functioning”. I finally deleted Power Toys through Add/Remove but the same warning still appears on bootup. However I don’t appear to have any inoperative device? Meanwhile I couldn't find any help on the Microsoft web-site as to how to get rid of the warning. I really must curb my entusiasm for venturing into the unknown!

Regards,
Pat

 

Hi Steve,

1. C:\W98XUNDO.DAT was not in Add/Remove but “Delete Window Millenium uninstall Information” was. Now Windows98 has never been loaded on my relatively new computer, only the initial ME Windows on top of which I re-installed ME when it was booting up to a blank screen. I would also mention that recently I have seen Windows ME referred to more than once as Windows 98X. If you agree I will first save all my data to a CD and keep it updated then will delete the “Delete Window Millenium uninstall Information” (since if I had occasion to use it I would be returned to an edition that would need troubleshooting so instead I assume it would be preferable to re-install a clean copy of ME.

2. I did as you said in msconfig. Under the Startup tab there were 4 references to Rundll two of which related to Power Toys, one to TweakUI and one to Startup Group. I unticked the first two but after re-boot it came up with the same warning. Then when I went into Add/Remove to check on 1. above I noticed a program “Send To extension Power Toy” was still in there, so if you agree I will delete this first before doing anything else then take it from there!.

Regards
Pat

 

C:\W9XUNDO.DAT plus MS Power Toys

Hi Steve,

1. As I have had no reply I have not deleted the W9XUNDO.DAT file.

2. I deleted all reference to Power Toys in Add/Remove then unticked all 4 of the Rundll references in msconfig but the same warning still comes up immediately after bootup. Any more suggestions?

Regards,
Pat

 

If you do not plan to uninstall the current ME, then you can go into Add/Remove and let it delete the uninstall information. This should delete the W98xundo.Dat.
This other problem with Target.Dll can be a bit difficult to fix manually, as it is deeply buried into the registry. I would try this. In the power toys download there is a file named Target.Inf. Right click on it and select Install. You should have a new entry in Add/Remove named "Target Context Menu (Remove Only) ". Try using it.
Alternately, you could try using Regseeker, it can find the entries for Target.Dll and remove them for you.

 

C:\W9XUNDO.DAT Plus MS Power Toys

Been away so sorry for the delay in answering. Thankyou Mark for your reply. I do already have the new entry in Add/Remove named "Target Context Menu (Remove Only) ". Forgive my ignorance but would you please elaborate on the “Try using it” bit; or would I be better using “Regseeker”?.

Kind regards,
Pat Alley

 

What I mean by 'Try using it' is to use that entry in Add/Remove to uninstall it, do this first. It should get rid of Target.Dll for you.

 

Hi Mark.
As you suggested, in Add/Remove I removed "Target Context Menu (Remove Only) ". However now when I boot up a warning headed RUNDLL has the following message.

“Error Loading C:WINDOWS\SYSTEM\ShellEXT\target.dll. The system cannot find the file specified”.

Please advise me what to do now!
In case it is relevant, in Add/Remove I have the following lines of which I am unsure of what they refer to viz:
Autoplay Extender
Explore From Here (Remove only)
Find..Extensions
FlexiCD (Remove only)
Send to Extensions Power Toy

Regards,
Pat

 

Autoplay Extender was supposed to improve CD file associaton, and FlexiCD is just an Audio CD player.
Send To and Find are part of Windows 98 and up, 95 did not have these features on the right click menu [Context Menu].
The Explore From Here can be handy. You can right click on any folder, and get a new Windows Explorer window open, with only that folder, it's files and any subfolders visible.
There is a manual method of removing the offending message, however I recommend using Regseeker, free. This program will clean out the registry. But, leave the unused file types it finds as errors alone.
Get rid of any Invalid ActiveX, CLSID's {bunchoflettersandnumbers}, along with anything that says Target.Dll and Target.Inf.
Do not be surprised if this program finds hundreds of errors.

 

Thankyou Mark for the explanations about the unknown applications. I did as you said and downloaded Regseeker and read all the comments other users had written on it noting one user saying he had deleted all the hundreds of entry errors found, following which his computer worked perfectly and notably faster but yet another commenting he had done the same, following which his computer became extememly unstable, invoked the backup which didn’t work and finally had to re-install his whole Windows program. With this in mind I did a regedit…. just in case. I then selected “Clean the registry” at which point it found 511 errors and as you advised deleted several invalid ActiveX and CLSID's along with 5 entries referring to target.dll (there were no target.inf). I then re-booted but still got the same RUNDLL warning as before. I went back to Regseeker and this time selected “Applications” and one referred to PowerToys which I deleted. Then to make sure, in Regseeker I made a search using ‘PowerToys’ and ‘ShellExt\target’. However on re-booting I still get the same RUNDLL warning!.

Kind regards,
Pat.

 

I guess that you already looked in Msconfig, have you looked in the Win.Ini and System.Ini files? You can double click these files, located in the Windows folder, and they will open in Notepad. By putting a semi colon ( at the beginning of the line like this ';run=', it causes that line to be ignored.

When these files were installed onto ME, ME put things in different places, all of this should be located in the registry. When you found 5 CLSID's with target.dll referenced, that sounds right.
In the registry, look at this Key for it, if there it will be on the right.
Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDll's
Try a search using just 'Target ".

 

Thankyou Mark for your suggestions. There were no obvious related items in Win.Ini nor System.Ini files and others which might be related proved unfruitful.

With regard to the registry there were several entries with the word “target” in them. None were obviously related but I deleted them all. That did not remove the warning after bootup so I re-installed them all, having done a ‘regedit’ beforehand..

Then I had the bright idea of re-installing Power Toys and starting again from scratch. As before I got the RUNDLL warning “C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\ShellExt\target.dll Missing Entry.CD Play Notify”
Didn’t know what this related to but obviously not what I thought before (see my very first entry to this thread).!

This time when re-installing I took more notice of all the different elements of Power Toys. In the Add/Remove Programs the added entries were:
Autoplay Extender*
Cabinet File Viewer
Comment Prompt Here Power Toy
Contents Submenu
Explore From Here (Remove only)*
Find…Extensions*
Flexi CD (Remove only)*
Send To… Extensions Power Toy*
Target Content Menu (Remove only)
TweakUI

Note then that the asterisked items I had commented on earlier which I could not recognise, were indeed part of PowerToys and obviously I should have deleted them. This may have been the underlying reason why I didn’t stand a chance of getting rid of the RUNDLL warnings. However worse was to come because when I pressed ‘Autoplay Extender’ in Add/Remove, not only would it not uninstall but I now got two RUNDLL warnings “C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\ShellExt\target.dll Missing Entry Uninstall”. together with the “Missing CD Play Notify”. The same happened when I pressed ‘Cabinet File Viewer’ and ‘Contents Submenu’ in Add/Remove but pressing the remaining entries did cause each of them in turn to uninstall. However I now had two extra RUNDLL warnings on bootup, one referring to TweakUI and the other Desk Menu.

I now went into MSCONFIG and under the Startup tab there were 3 entries referring to TweakUI, Deskmenu and Autoplay Extender respectively which I unticked. After re-booting there were now no warnings except the reminder that msconfig ‘Selective Startup’ was being used. Now the problem was that I knew how to untick them but had no idea how to delete these 3 entries and the Help files were of no help!.

I finally made an educated guess that one way might be if I removed them from the registry. This is where “Regseeker”, the program you introduced me to Mark, came in very useful and by clicking the sub-heading ‘Startup entries” there were only 15 entries to choose from of which 3, TweakUI, Deskmenu and Autoplayer Extender had identical entries to those in MSCONFIG, which I deleted.

I now re-booted and glory be,for the first time in 3 weeks there were no warnings and no sign of any POWERTOYS.programs in Add/Remove
So a happy ending!

If others are to benefit from my experience it appears to me that if any uninstall goes sour then consideration should be given to re-installing the program and this time make a note of each .exe file before uninstalling again. Hopefully the second time it will uninstall correctly but if it doesn’t, carefully check for the .exe names in MSCONFIG and untick them before re-booting. If all is well use Regseeker (and "belts and braces" do a regedit beforehand) to find an entry in the registry containing any of the .exe file names then delete those entries and re-boot. If this doesn’t work then at least one can restore the registry by using Regseeker’s backup file (with regedit still in reserve!).

Kind regards,
Pat

 

Boy, you really dug into that registry, no doubt that the entries were in a different place compared to 9x. 9x has two files for the registry, User.Dat and System.Dat, ME has the additional Classes.Dat.
I thank you for posting the final solution, no doubt some other ME user may come up against this.