System Information (and more) won't work

Abraxas - are you still around?

Running Windows XP Pro SP2 on a standalone.

Despite recreating my system volume information folder, I cannot get start-search function to work (just shows puppydog, wagging - nothing else), no system information (not a broken shortcut - the exe file doesn't work either - just hourglass and then nothing), no system restore (just a blank system restore box, no calanders, nothing), and no microsoft update (Internet Explorer just says 'done' and I have a blank screen).

But automatic Windows updating does work, even so (a new one came through after the problem started).

Seems I have lost some functionality. It all started after I deinstalled a trial version of Kaspersy's AV Personal pro (which certainly stripped something out - Windows told me, though I can't remember the error message) and also inadvisedly ran System Mechanic 6 in its original iteration (silly me!)

I can't even 'repair' Windows XP - because when I put my self-created SP2 enhanced slipstreamed installation disc in and hit install to access repair function - it says some files are missing so it can't do it. And a full reinstall is the last thing I need!! Running SFC /scannow shows/does nothing helpful.

Running installed F-Prot AV, Spybot, Zonealarm Pro and Microsoft Anti Spyware - all show nothing averse. And apart from this missing stuff - the computer is behaving perfectly well.

I can't scan for malware (which I think is unlikely anyway) using an online scanner because - you guessed it - it just sits there with the javascript address thingy on the bottom bar. The ActiveX necessary doesn't get to me.

I have tried the Abraxas (Nov 2002) solution - I think correctly - below:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts/fixwinxphelp.vbs

But this has not helped either.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

This is just a wild guess but it can't hurt to try. Click start run and type "regsvr32 jscript.dll" without the quotes. Reboot and see if things work.

 

Zander's A Genius

Yay! Many thanks Zander - worked perfectly. Though I feel a bit of a chancer and a mug for just typing in Run something from someone I never met, hitting OK and rebooting. Paranoia rules!!

But all's well that ended very well indeed.

If you'd care to let me know what it is I did - I'd love to learn...

 

Glad to hear you it worked for you. As I said' it was just a wild guess, a long shot, but I've seen problems similar to yours that were caused by jscript.dll not being properly registered. That's all that command does. Re-registers whatever dll you specify. A lot of problems can be fixed using regsvr32. Only problem is knowing which files need to be registered for a given problem.

As for being wary about things like this, I can understand why. One thing about this board though. There's always somebody else watching. If you're uncomfortable about trying somebody's suggestion just sit on it for a bit. You can rest assured if it's bad advice or it's something that can cause harm in any way, somebody will jump in and point it out in fairly quickly.

I'm glad it worked. Wish all computer problems were this simple to fix.

 

oserdavid - these days (and probably long before this) some paranoia is a good thing.

However, on this forum you can feel safe with suggestions made by any Staff or Team Member and any poster with a reasonably high post count. They obviously don't know all the answers but are careful enough to not offer potentially dangerous advice without warning you. Otherwise they would have been removed from the forum long ago.

Newer posters are a little different proposition but lots of them really know their stuff too so if you get a suggestion to do something that makes no sense to you from a newer poster, just wait a few hours because by then enough of the old timers will have taken a look that if it were potentially harmful advice, you would see comments to that effect and if it were just plain bad, it would be gone.

 

Thanks folks - advice taken!