a strange event occurred the other night:
i was surfing the net and, simultaneously, clearing some un needed
programs from my hard drive. i selected a demo of an old game (Soldier of
Fortune) for deletion through the start menu and immediately afterwards i
received a ".dll exception" message and explorer had to kill itself, forcing
a restart. i do not recall the exact dll file, as i sort of freaked out and
later couldnt recall the exact error code. i do not think that my attempt to
delete the game file caused this because there were no vital dll's in the
game file, i think it was coincidental, but what could have caused it?
after restarting, all of my hardware devices were apparently
uninstalled. every piece of hardware i own was popping up as "new hardware
detected". my graphics settings were reset to default. my USB devices no
longer functioned until after the system had scanned all other hardware and
finally detected the USB ports. everything is basically functional at this
point, but the system is running much slower for basic operations now. i
de-fragged, virus-scanned, and spyware scanned to no avail. i continue to
have slow speeds for basic functions (like opening/closing windows and basic
programs, taking forever to begin a basic download, and the computer makes a
noisier clicking sound when the hard drive is processing something) and,
also, i now occasionally have lag between the audio and video tracks when i
watch videos, including on youtube. I also receive an error message every
time i start up the system that reads "a duplicate name exists on the
network". when i click on it, it dissapears. what the hell is going on? my
system specs are as follows:

PIII 3.0 GHz
512 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
160 GB hard drive
NVdia GeForce 7800 GS
Windows XP Home Edition

any help would be appreciated. thanks for your time!

On Mar 2, 7:20 pm, Luke <L...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> a strange event occurred the other night:
> i was surfing the net and, simultaneously, clearing some un needed
> programs from my hard drive. i selected a demo of an old game (Soldier of
> Fortune) for deletion through the start menu and immediately afterwards i
> received a ".dll exception" message and explorer had to kill itself, forcing
> a restart. i do not recall the exact dll file, as i sort of freaked out and
> later couldnt recall the exact error code. i do not think that my attempt to
> delete the game file caused this because there were no vital dll's in the
> game file, i think it was coincidental, but what could have caused it?
> after restarting, all of my hardware devices were apparently
> uninstalled. every piece of hardware i own was popping up as "new hardware
> detected". my graphics settings were reset to default. my USB devices no
> longer functioned until after the system had scanned all other hardware and
> finally detected the USB ports. everything is basically functional at this
> point, but the system is running much slower for basic operations now. i
> de-fragged, virus-scanned, and spyware scanned to no avail. i continue to
> have slow speeds for basic functions (like opening/closing windows and basic
> programs, taking forever to begin a basic download, and the computer makes a
> noisier clicking sound when the hard drive is processing something) and,
> also, i now occasionally have lag between the audio and video tracks when i
> watch videos, including on youtube. I also receive an error message every
> time i start up the system that reads "a duplicate name exists on the
> network". when i click on it, it dissapears. what the hell is going on? my
> system specs are as follows:
>
> PIII 3.0 GHz
> 512 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
> 160 GB hard drive
> NVdia GeForce 7800 GS
> Windows XP Home Edition
>
> any help would be appreciated. thanks for your time!

Try this:
Insert Windows XP Home Edition CD into drive.
Power down computer.
Turn computer back on being sure machine comes up from CD
Follow instructions for reloading windows

Good Luck