No results in Help and Support search

[Marco De Vitis]

Hello,
I'm having a problem with Help and Support on my WinXP Pro SP2 (all
updates installed). It's there since a lot of time, but I didn't care
much, as I don't use H&S that much... but I'd like to fix it anyway.

The H&S window opens correctly but, whatever I type in the Search box,
soon after pressing Enter or the green arrow button the search stops, and
no results are listed. The window appears more or less like this:
http://www.mccune.cc/pchealth.jpg (image posted by someone else in a web
forum, mine is the same, except that it's in Italian ).

Searching around, I can find many solutions for H&S not starting at all,
but that's not my case: H&S starts, I can browse it by choosing topics
from the left bar, I can search the index... I just cannot search anything
with the global search box.

I already tried "helpctr -regserver" and the famous fixwinxphelp.vbs, to
no avail.

Any other clues?

Also, supposing someone here will suggest me to restore files from the
original WinXP CD or something like this, I have a question about it: will
this overwrite any newer files installed by SP1, SP2 and other updates?
Should I reinstall SP2 after the fix? If the answer is "Yes", then: after
reinstalling SP2, how can I be sure that it didn't overwrite any
security/other updates I did install after SP2?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Marco De Vitis]

Il 02/03/2005, alle ore 14:32, Marco De Vitis ha scritto:

The H&S window opens correctly but, whatever I type in the Search box,
soon after pressing Enter or the green arrow button the search stops, and
no results are listed. The window appears more or less like this:

No ideas, anyone?

In the meantime, I tested H&S searching on a different WinXP SP2
installation on the same computer, and it works fine. So I compared the
two C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR folders, and tried replacing any different
contents, to no avail.

I also noticed that the following errors are appended in
C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\Logs\helpctr.log each time a search fails:

2005/03/07 13:38:47 Script error:
2005/03/07 13:38:47
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Message : L'oggetto non è un insieme
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Url : hcp://system/panels/subpanels/Search.htm
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Line : 33
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Character: 6
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Code : 0
2005/03/07 13:38:47
2005/03/07 13:38:47
############################################################
2005/03/07 13:38:47
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Script error:
2005/03/07 13:38:47
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Message : L'oggetto non è un insieme
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Url : hcp://system/panels/subpanels/Search.htm
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Line : 355
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Character: 9
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Code : 0

(I'd expect the original English message to be something like "The object
is not a set")
I see nothing strange in those two lines in Search.htm. I also tried
replacing the Search.htm from the working partition, and then stopping and
restarting the Help and Support service, but nothing changed.

Do those errors suggest anything to you?

 

[Marco De Vitis]

Il 07/03/2005, alle ore 14:09, Marco De Vitis ha scritto:

Il 02/03/2005, alle ore 14:32, Marco De Vitis ha scritto:


I also noticed that the following errors are appended in
C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\Logs\helpctr.log each time a search fails:

2005/03/07 13:38:47 Script error:
2005/03/07 13:38:47
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Message : L'oggetto non è un insieme
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Url : hcp://system/panels/subpanels/Search.htm
2005/03/07 13:38:47 Line : 33

Ok, I also tried EVERY other tip about repairing H&S on
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/top10faqs.htm, with no success.
When asked for the Windows CD, I used a slipstreamed SP2 one, made by
myself from the original CD and the SP2 I downloaded, to prevent updated
files from being overwritten.

Really no ideas, anyone?