files disappear randomly

[Ben]

Upon booting up my computer, I was informed that three or
four files with important-sounding extensions
(.dll, .inf, etc) were missing. Things were running
slowly and crashing left, right and centre. When I
rebooted there was no error message, but things were
unchanged. System restore fixed most things, but some
programs never recovered. I could re-install windows to
get these files back, but that's a bloody pain, with the
activation thingy and all. Is there any simple way to
check over the files that are there (I don't remember
which ones are gone) and replace the missing ones?

 

[Malke]

Upon booting up my computer, I was informed that three or
four files with important-sounding extensions
(.dll, .inf, etc) were missing. Things were running
slowly and crashing left, right and centre. When I
rebooted there was no error message, but things were
unchanged. System restore fixed most things, but some
programs never recovered. I could re-install windows to
get these files back, but that's a bloody pain, with the
activation thingy and all. Is there any simple way to
check over the files that are there (I don't remember
which ones are gone) and replace the missing ones?

Start>Run sfc /scannow. You should put your XP cd in the drive first.

Malke