Overwritten system files

[Don Phillipson]

New error message (never seen before) in WinXP SP3:
"Some Windows sytem files may have been overwritten with
earlier versions."

I suspect instead hardware problems (Asus MB 6 years old):
but I had never seen this before (and not in the next two
weeks before boot failure. Malwarebytes had been run in
this period, finding nothing.)

Has anyone else ever seen this error message?

 

[David H. Lipman]

New error message (never seen before) in WinXP SP3:
"Some Windows sytem files may have been overwritten with
earlier versions."

I suspect instead hardware problems (Asus MB 6 years old):
but I had never seen this before (and not in the next two
weeks before boot failure. Malwarebytes had been run in
this period, finding nothing.)

Has anyone else ever seen this error message?

I think this happens when you are at one Service Pack level and the files, which are
legitimate, were replace with a previous Serice Pack level. Such as a SP3 file was
replaced with a SP2 file.

Have you tried executing the following ?

SFC /scannow