Autochk.exe not found

I am trying to help a friend with a laptop problem. We were running out of things to check (problem started around 4/16/2009) so we uninstalled the Windows updates that were installed on 4/16/2009. Also uninstalled SP3.

Rebooted and a new problem is here. The system starts up - gives a blue screen that autochk.exe is not found - shuts down - reboots - error - cycles through this. We tried all the different Safe Modes and they all hit the same roadblock.

After reading this forum, I took the system disk out of his laptop and put it in my laptop as a second hard disk. Autochk.exe is in the System32 directory and 2 other places. Copied the version with the same date to System32 directory and then ran CHKDSK /f /r on it. There was one minor error and then it was okay.

Put the disk back in his laptop and the same error message - can not boot.

Does it make sense to copy the older (2004) version of autochk.exe into the System32 directory and try that? Copy mine to his system?

I believe I have a Windows XP Professional CD in my car. Should we try to boot off that - and then what do I do to try to repair the Windows components and files?

Any help and direction is appreciated. Our first priority is to get the system to run. then we will deal with why it can not connect to the Internet using a host name - IP addresses work just fine.

Brad

 

Thanks for the post.

I have already tried copying the i386 version of the program to \System32 and that did not fix the problem. I ran the CHKDSK on the drive when it was installed in my computer as an extra drive. Did not fix the problem. Since I can not boot off that disk I can not check the registry. And I know there is nothing there in scheduled tasks for this. But, can not get at that since I can not boot off the drive.

So, I tried to do the repair function off the Windows CD and that just gave me a Windows command prompt. No option to "do a repair ".

Now, I have "gone for the hammer" and an "restoring the factory content" off the IBM hidden service partition and will see what kind of a system I have when this is done.

The saga continues . . .