Sick XP box

[Steve]

One of our XP machines (dell) is sick again...about 3 Mo
ago.. had to reload XP etc... for flaky intermittant
keyboard problem... (Per Dell tech support instructions)
it has been running fine until recently

now... at startup messenger error: messenger encountered
a problem and must shut down. this has been disabled for
now.

outlook 2003 having send/receive problems... I installed
SP3 for office XP yesterday

IE....
file/print and file/print preview menu selections greyed
out.

view/text size does not work and does not have the black
dot that shows the current mode.



when I go to computer management I get continuous error
boxes ... something about outgoing call cannot be made
since the application is dispatching input-synchronous
call.... the snap-in display may be inconsistant with wht
removable storage svc?????

the strangest problem... the current application will
lose focus while your are using it... typing or
whatever... the window dims and to continue.. you must
click with the mouse to regain focus... it happens every
few seconds to a few minutes...

In task mgr.. I noticed that when the losing focus thing
happens... a process - winhlp32.dll.exe gets a few %
briefly... then back to 0 cpu time....

Norton Anti Virus 2004 installed with current dat
files... and current scan....

Any ideas???

thanks
steve

 

[Guest]

Hi you can uninstall Messenger if you are not using it (Click Start -> Run Type in - RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove) or if you don't want to have a look in services (details follow). Try and run a virus\hacker scan at http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck. Hve a look also at services.msc (go to Start -> Run and type it in) I could sensd a list of what you need on. And maybe you could send me a remote assistance invite and i might be able to help

 

[RA]

SP3 for Office XP causes more problems than it fixes. I don't think there is
a way to uninstall it, you have to reinstall Office XP.

 

[Steve]

The problems started a week or so before I installed
officeXP sp3. I read about the known issue with timing
out while sending/receiving mail.... so I was trying to
fix that....

I can't help think that all of this is related...

I did go to symantec/securitycheck and both security scan
and virus check came out clean...

I didn't learn anything new in the event viewer either...

:-(

steve

 

[steve]

in task mgr... killing the winhlp32.dll.exe (several)
allowed outlook to work correctly sending and
receiving... and the losing focus problem went away...

I found a "run" registry entry for the
winhlp32.dll.exe... once I cleaned this out... it did
not come back after rebooting.

still having some menu problems with IE