Up until yesterday, I lived with that problem for almost
a year. I was finally able to get the Help and Support
Center to come back up as well as get back all of my
other help functionality.
Please let me start from the beginning. I am running a
Windows XP Professional machine. I stay current with all
of my updates by using the update notification software
built within Windows XP.
Shortly after I got my new system, I did all of the
updates that I needed to do at the time that the Windows
update site (
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) said I
needed to do and thought I'd be fine.
Unfortunately, I lost my Help and Support center as well
as all of my other help. It didn't matter if I was in
Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. I had no help. I
could see my topics, but there was no help to be had for
the topics. I couldn't even open a file with a CHM
extension. What I got was an error similar to the
following: "Cannot open the file:
mk
MSITSTORE:C:\Program Files\McAfee.com\Personal
Firewall\help\mpf.chm".
As I said previously, I had this problem. I, at the
time, went back and forth with one of Microsoft's Most
Valuable Players, Mr. Pete Lees. When he put his first
post out, to be honest, I was a little reluctant to try
what he suggested as I did not know him.
So, I did a little research and found Microsoft's Most
Valuable Player website
(
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com) and verified his
name. I felt reasonably assured that if Microsoft had
his name listed, I could and would trust this individual.
Between the two of us, we must have had a dozen or so
posts on the system. At the time, I had one or two other
people post to my problem as well. The following is what
I had suggested to me:
Click Start, Run and enter HELPCTR -REGSERVER
Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm
Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.dougknox.com/
MJ's Help Diagnostics or CHM Link Checker (The Helpware
Group)
http://helpware.net/downloads/index.htm#MJs
I would like to also say that Mr. Lees suggested that I
run a Microsoft update (article number?????). I wish I
could remember. Maybe he or another MVP will see this
and have an idea of what I'm talking about and post the
article number for us.
I tried everything that was suggested to me and nothing
seemed to work. So, I gave up. I figured, I knew what I
knew, and what I didn't I could research using
Microsoft's support site (
http://support.microsoft.com)
or Google (
http://www.google.com).
Now, here I was working on a totally different problem.
We use a particular piece of software where I work and on
our three newest machines, one of which I have, if the
data goes beyond the bottom of the screen, we get no
scroll bar. The first thing I thought of was that I had
too high a screen resolution which made everything really
small.
So, here I am, changing this monitor setting and that
monitor setting. I did the following to get to the point
prior to invoking the Help and Support center:
1) Right clicked a free space on my desktop.
2) Left clicked Properties.
3) Left clicked Settings.
4) Left clicked Advanced.
5) Left clicked Adapter.
6) Left clicked Properties.
7) Left clicked Troubleshoot.
All of a sudden Help and Support starts to come up and my
firewall software is asking if I want to allow the
Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server 5.1 access to the
internet. I told it yes and the Help and Support center
has been working fine since. At the time, the service
was not revoked within my firewall, nor was it listed.
You wouldn't think that working on your display settings
would help start Help and Support and not only did I get
that back, but I got all of my other help back as well
and without errors. The only thing I can think of is
that it was some combination possibly of two things: 1)
everything I tried above prior to Help and Support
working and clicking on Troubleshoot in step 7 above.
Clicking on Troubleshoot must have started some service
that was common to Help and Support and somehow back when
I first got this machine and was doing the updates, an
update inadvertently and permanently shut down the
service until I clicked Troubleshoot. All I know is that
everything seems to be working fine now.
As I stated in my original posting which no longer seems
to be on the system, I don't blame Microsoft. We all
know the risks involved in doing the updates. What may
work fine with one machine, may not with the next.
Hopefully, I haven't bored you or anyone else. I truely
hope this helps you and everyone else with the same
problem. With any luck, one of Microsoft's MVPs will see
this and will be able to put all of the pieces of this
puzzle together and say you just needed to do this, this
and that and apparently you did.
In this way, people having the same problem will be able
to resolve it quicker than what I did and hopefully you
do.
David.
