XP Help and Support / System Information utilities lost after installing Protel 99 SE

C

CityKidx

Hope this post may help some of you who have installed Protel 99 SE trial CD
and lost your win XP help and support system (along with a few other XP
features and utilities).

I made the following change to the Windows XP registry and was able to
correct the problem.

Under the following keys in ControlSet001, ControlSet002 and
CurrentControlSet,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manage\Environment
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Session Manage\Environment
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manage\Environment

I changed the "windir" setting to: C:\windows and the Help and Support
system became operational.

It was formerly set to %SystemRoot% and when launching "XP Help and
Support", the OS would search the incorrect directory paths looking for the
Help and Support system files. The directory paths were incorrectly
parsed together by the OS and actually included the varialble %SystemRoot%
in the path instead of using the actual path that %System Root% equated to.
Thanks to the file monitoring utility available from www.systeminternals.com
we were able to see the problem. In addtion to Protel's installation
disabling Help and Support, it also disabled the system file checker and
System Information utility. Autodesk inventor would also no longer run
as well.

Again, this registry change corrected all of the problems.
 
A

Alozaina

CityKidx said:
Hope this post may help some of you who have installed Protel 99 SE
trial CD
and lost your win XP help and support system (along with a few other
XP
features and utilities).

I made the following change to the Windows XP registry and was able to
correct the problem.

Under the following keys in ControlSet001, ControlSet002 and
CurrentControlSet,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session
Manage\Environment
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Session
Manage\Environment
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manage\Environment

I changed the "windir" setting to: C:\windows and the Help and
Support
system became operational.

It was formerly set to %SystemRoot% and when launching "XP Help and
Support", the OS would search the incorrect directory paths looking
for the
Help and Support system files. The directory paths were incorrectly
parsed together by the OS and actually included the varialble
%SystemRoot%
in the path instead of using the actual path that %System Root% equated
to.
Thanks to the file monitoring utility available from
www.systeminternals.com
we were able to see the problem. In addtion to Protel's
installation
disabling Help and Support, it also disabled the system file checker
and
System Information utility. Autodesk inventor would also no longer
run
as well.

Again, this registry change corrected all of the problems.

You saved me hours of trouble, however, I think I found a more elegant
way to solve the problem.

If you go to the system properties box in XP and under system variables
edit the WINDIR path by just adding a backslash after *%Systemroot%\*
like so solves the problem without having to delve into the registry!

Regards
 

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