Add/Remove Program fails to populate (not autocad)

[canisdementis]

This is a new twist on a topic I see a lot here. I cannot get my
Add/remove programs to populate. It sits for hours saying "please wait
while this list is being populated." I have looked for the "-1," too
much white space error in regedit. I have run regsvr32 appwiz.cpl. I
have disabled my firewall and virus programs (not for very long
though). This is common very recently to every PC I own, two of which
are only 3 weeks old. I have updated virus definitions and nothing is
found. The only common programs on all the computers are: Napster,
Netgear's Storage Central, and Firefox. Two run XP Media 2005, and one
has XP pro.
Any help would be appreciated. I am going a little nuts here.

 

[wisccal]

Hi,

Have you also tried using HijackThis?

The following MS Support article may be of help to you:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329891&Product=win2000

How about Windows updates? Do you run them regularly?

Also, when did this issue appear first? It seems pretty weird that you
have not just one, but several machines that are affected. This really
sounds like a virus.

Regards,
Steve
www.stkomp.com

 

[canisdementis]

I tried running those commands from the Microsquish site and I got
errors on all but the last.
regsvr32 shell32.dll -i ran ok

I have autoupdate on, so I get those as soon as they come out. All my
virus protection and and spyware blockers are also on autoupdate.