msinfo32 - What's the story?

Entering msinfo32 at 'Run...' should bring up the 'System Information Tool' as well should the shortcut in 'Accessories' or even directly running the executable from the system 'dll cache' directory, yet I get the XP Pro 'Help & Support' window.

What gives? Am I missing something here?

 

Give this a shot?

 

Hi, Bill ~

That was nothing but the keys laid out which still lead to the msinfo32.exe file that still open the XP Pro 'Help & Support' window rather than the 'System Information Tool.'

'winmsd' & 'msinfo32' both open the same 'Help & Support' window.

This occurs on all the machines now - and shouldn't. Is this a MS faux pas?

 

How about a search your box for msinfo32.exe and open it from the search results window. I can open mine from one in MS shared and one from dll cache.

If it gives you the same thing maybe extract a new copy and replace? If it opens, then it has to be shortcut probs?

 

Hi, Bill ~

Per my previous post, they open the XP Pro 'Help & Support' window.

 

This is some weirdness I was never able to track down, so settled for making the shortcut point to:

msinfo32 "%1 "

Works in command line, too.

 

Hi, Abraxas ~

Good call! Forced it to open - thank you very much!

Did not work at command line in XP, but don't need it to.

Now, does this happen to you, too, in XP Pro??

What exactly does the "%1" mean and do in this case?

 

The msinfo32 "%1" works in my command line.

There was a string of posts some time ago about this problem. I didn't realize it was happening to me until I was investigating an answer for the poster.

I remember rummaging around in the registry and thinking that the "%1" would work, but I must have been smarter then because I cannot now retrace my thinking. I had forgotten all about this until you mentioned it .

I suspect it is a registry cleaner. I was trying a lot of them just prior.

 

ABb ~

So you didn't know until you tried so don't know how long it may have been that way, huh?

The "%1 " does what....you know by chance?

 

Here's the previous thread, so I discovered my loss around August, 2002.

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8082&highlight=msinfo32

I tried the "%1 ", by analogy, after seeing its usage somewhere else in the registry, but I really don't remember what I was thinking!

Repair installations and SP1 neither fixed the problem nor altered the change I had made in the link target.

It became a non-issue and I lost interest in pursuing it once there was a workaround.

 

Thanks for the link Abraxas! I can see how you became intrigued as I am becoming.

The "%1" fix works great at 'Run...' but affixing it to the reg key renders it unable to be found.

What is odd is that even if you open the actual executable, it still opens the Help window. Do you think this is a result of the dlls it might call on?

 

When you say shortcut, are you referring to the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Shared Tools \ MSInfo

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ App Paths \ msinfo32.exe

keys or is there another place the shortcuts from 'Run' are stored?

 

I was just referring to the shortcut in the System Tools. I hadn't thought about the registry entries related to Run.

I knew i was spending too much time in the registry when I started having "(default) No Value Specified" dreams.

I decided to uninstall myself from further confusion.

 

That's hilarious! I have had the dreams, too.

I don't see a shortcut in Administrative Tools for msinfo in XP. Where are you finding it?

 

Accessories > System Tools > System Information.

You must be a command-line guy if you haven't seen that one .

 

Okay, Abraxas ~

I right-clicked the shortcut in All Programs and modified it accordingly.

You know what I was doing was going to

C:\Documents and Settings \ Bruce G.F. Krymow \ Start Menu \ Programs \ Accessories \ System Tools

but all the shortcuts listed in accessories are not actually stored in the folder from that path.

I see how you can lose interest in this as fast as you get intrigued.

Thanks for helping get to the bottom of this!

 

You almost hooked me again. I checked on all the dependencies of msinfo32 and made sure they were all registered. They were.

But beyond the first layer of dependencies, things rapidly became more complex than my brain architecture since, as is to be expected, system information depends on large numbers of libraries.

Found an orphan file in C:\Windows\PCHealth\Helpctr\Binaries\
called "msinfo.dll ", but it seems to be all by itself and registering it made no difference, either.

I'm going to try to End Task.

 

Got it.

For reasons undetermined at this point, the 'C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\OfflineCache' folder was missing the 'index.dat' file.

Tried creating one - nope - but simply copying one from another unit and placing it in the folder allowed 'msinfo32' to open properly. If renamed or removed, unable to open properly and when placed back, all was well!

So something in the 'index.dat' file triggers something to be called to allow the msinfo32.exe to properly open, but do not know exactly what yet. I am trying to find a good .dat viewer.

Any way to create a fresh, new 'index.dat' file?

 

Ah, yes. There was a mention of that index.dat file, and I had just one run of those cleaners to remove the index.dat's.

Like you, I tried just creating a blank one, but that didn't work, and unlike the other index.dat's, that one was not recreated on startup.

I really thought that the idea was a dead-end, but since I just installed XP on another machine, I'll have to try copying it.