C
Cal Learner
I was running XP Pro SP2 happily. Problems now. Skip to
"*****questions*****" at the bottom to avoid my history narrative.
I had turned off some services like RPC (remote operations did not
seem good). No problems noted.
Later I went to the file associations and clicked a lot of items to
always show the extensions, and perhaps set a few confirm after
download. Later I saw my IE Favorites all had a .url suffix. OK. So
I cleared the box for always showing that extension. The .url were
still there, but I figured it would get fixed on next reboot. It did
not.
The next symptom was that my integrated motherboard audio stopped
working. I would get PC speaker beeps, and playing a .wav in Media
Player gave a box "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because
there is a problem with your sound device. There may not be a sound
device installed on your computer, it may be in use by another
program, or it may not be functioning." I tried changing drivers and
so forth.
I did a repair install of XP pro from the CD. Still no audio, and I
was back to SP1, even after online updates. The repair install was
good in that no application settings were disturbed. But things were
still not really right. I installed SP2. That worked fine. But the
audio problem was still there.
I had an unactivated XP loaded on a smaller drive that I had
disconnected after cloning to the big drive. I reconnected that
smaller drive. Got the message that it was not activated, but I
*did* get regular sounds. Therefore I have a software problem. I did
not attempt to activate that install.
Now attempting to uninstall the old sound program that was installed
when I was doing one of my sound driver changes gives a popup "Setup
failed to launch installation engine: The RPC server is
unavailable." I found a list of the services that are on by default
in XP Pro and turned on those that I had disabled. Still the same
error. I was thinking of using the manual method of removing an
install listing in Add Remove programs per
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314481
Before I actually did that, I decided to defrag. Must need it by
now, right? Defragmenter opens, but clicking the buttons, or
clicking the menu items give no response when clicking Analyze or
Defragment.
**************questions**************
So I think there are probably things screwed up that I have not even
found yet.
1. Is there something a little more aggressive at putting XP back to
defaults during recovery reinstall and still have most applications
not need reinstall?
2. If I do a regular reinstall without formatting, will I have an
activation problem? I understand that I would have to reinstall most
applications.
3. Any other suggestions?
"*****questions*****" at the bottom to avoid my history narrative.
I had turned off some services like RPC (remote operations did not
seem good). No problems noted.
Later I went to the file associations and clicked a lot of items to
always show the extensions, and perhaps set a few confirm after
download. Later I saw my IE Favorites all had a .url suffix. OK. So
I cleared the box for always showing that extension. The .url were
still there, but I figured it would get fixed on next reboot. It did
not.
The next symptom was that my integrated motherboard audio stopped
working. I would get PC speaker beeps, and playing a .wav in Media
Player gave a box "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because
there is a problem with your sound device. There may not be a sound
device installed on your computer, it may be in use by another
program, or it may not be functioning." I tried changing drivers and
so forth.
I did a repair install of XP pro from the CD. Still no audio, and I
was back to SP1, even after online updates. The repair install was
good in that no application settings were disturbed. But things were
still not really right. I installed SP2. That worked fine. But the
audio problem was still there.
I had an unactivated XP loaded on a smaller drive that I had
disconnected after cloning to the big drive. I reconnected that
smaller drive. Got the message that it was not activated, but I
*did* get regular sounds. Therefore I have a software problem. I did
not attempt to activate that install.
Now attempting to uninstall the old sound program that was installed
when I was doing one of my sound driver changes gives a popup "Setup
failed to launch installation engine: The RPC server is
unavailable." I found a list of the services that are on by default
in XP Pro and turned on those that I had disabled. Still the same
error. I was thinking of using the manual method of removing an
install listing in Add Remove programs per
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314481
Before I actually did that, I decided to defrag. Must need it by
now, right? Defragmenter opens, but clicking the buttons, or
clicking the menu items give no response when clicking Analyze or
Defragment.
**************questions**************
So I think there are probably things screwed up that I have not even
found yet.
1. Is there something a little more aggressive at putting XP back to
defaults during recovery reinstall and still have most applications
not need reinstall?
2. If I do a regular reinstall without formatting, will I have an
activation problem? I understand that I would have to reinstall most
applications.
3. Any other suggestions?