Windows Vista Acer software problem

Hi folks,

My Acer 7720G laptop was purchased second hand and came with Win Vista and a heap of Acer so called "goodies ". My lady and I use it as a backup for our two desktops when we have a power failure ( all too often where we live ), so it doesn't have much on it that we really need to save or keep.

Problem is to do with a strange event this am where upon the 'desktop' toolbar ( or is it the status bar? ) at the bottom of screen changed its normal appearance. I also got a Windows Security message that the security centre is turned off.

Well, try as I might I cannot get that turned on again nor can I turn on a lot of other things as well !! It seems that I have had a major failure somewhere and I cant figure it out at all. I have tried to;

1. Run > diskmngmt.msc > and get a message window with "A referral was returned from server "

"A referral was returned from server " is all I get with what ever I type into "run" !! It seems that I cannot enter registry using any of the means that I know of.

2. I have tried the "Help and Support" pages for things like Security > turn on/off:

and "Click to Open Windows Defender" > I get "Application failed to initialize: 0:x800106ba. A problem caused this program's service to stop, restart your computer ...etc etc "

I have restarted my computer no less than 6 times in the course of my efforts to fix this problem.

I am hoping that there is a pattern of some sort that the experts here can recognise and advise on how to correct or fix this problem.

I never came to enjoy this Acer version of Windows and would be quite happy to be instructed on how to instal my registered copy of Win Xp pro, into our laptop. I did get three Acer CDs with the laptop, none of which enables restoration of Vista and none of which has a full copy of the software that I am able to recognise. The laptop does have a M/Soft sticker attached on the under side indicating proper installation of Vista, at least in it's earlier life.

Please help .... and thanks for all advise offered.

 

Hello Arie,

Thanks for your response. I have installed the dds.scr to my laptop via my USB drive after d/loading it on my desktop PC. My laptop wont connect to the internet, a fact I failed to mention in my first post, sorry mate.

Having double clicked the dds.scr tool, the response I got was "A referral was returned from server ". It seems that the dds.scr is another thing that wont work on my laptop !?

Formatting is starting to look very attractive, lol.

I hope this helps a bit....

 

Hi folks,

I have spent 12 hours searching online for things to do with "A referral was returned from server ". I finally got a reference about checking; Control Panel > Admin tools > Services > ..... which brought up "Services (Local) ".

More than half of the items listed were "Disabled" !! The reference suggested that all these were to be turned "on" or "enabled ". It took a while to manually enable them all let me tell you; however, I have restarted my laptop and I now have internet connection and can navigate around a whole lot better than before.

Now, I dont know what or how the problem happened but I am now up and running again. Hooray !!! Some of my previous System tray icons have disappeared but I think that is a minor problem, something to work on tomorrow.

It's now 10:30pm and I am off for a well earned rest, cya folks.