Spooky netwoking behaviour! XPHome, Win98SE, XPPro...SP2, SP1....H

[Guest]

I have a small network (about 6 pc's, Linksys router, a Netgear (Linux) NAS
device) which was working fine until I installed SP2 on two computers. The
first (XP Pro) upgraded OK. The second (XP Home) was a DISASTER! Windows
Explorer took forever or locked up every time I tried to access files on the
"server" pc (Win98SE), so I tried uninstalling SP2, rolling back to a
previous restore point, even restoring from a fresh Norton Ghost (Ghost 9)
image - all failed, so I've now used the system restore CD that came with the
PC. First time (a "repair") failed too, so I've done a full re-install.

I've run windows update repeatedly (it took hours!) and installed everything
but SP2. It seemed to work OK until I tried to browse "My Network Places".
All expected PC's show up, and the shared disks, and when I double click to
open the disk, I get the expected "Connect to (computername)" dialog, with a
greyed out "User name" field (set to (COMPUTERNAME)\Guest). Type in the
password, click OK (or press Return) and sometimes it connects (way less than
1 in 10), but mostly it doesn't.

There are no error messages, the dialog just flickers and reappears. And
sometimes it connects on the Nth try.


A connection script in the startup group seems to be just as erratic (only
tested a few times), but (AH!) does produce the message -

"System Error 67 has occurred. The network name cannot be found."

It USED to work fine. The XPHome pc has a few more updates now than before,
and I guess that one of those might be the cause of the problem.

Ideally I'd like to fix the problem, and any suggestions welcomed!

I'm also so far along that I'm even considering installing SP2 in the hope
that it might fix things (and as I've got to install all the app. software
again anyway, it might be better than having to apply it later...)

I'm also considering a Ghost 2003 backup (hell, it can't make it any worse!)

Any other suggestions? (Alcohol?)

Thanks in anticipation!

OK, now what was that error number again...

 

[Guest]

Ah! Talking to myself eh?

Well, Ghost 2003 didn't have enough room, so that idea has gone out of the
window (I couldn't be arsed to find out how to configure it to work with the
network at that time of night!)

I've downloaded SP2, and the PC now appears to connect to the other machines
OK,

...BUT , trying to install apps off the server by double-clicking the
appropriate .exe file in Windows explorer results in a message (25% of time?)
of -

"This application has failed to start because the application configuration
is incorrect" and the helpful note that RE-installing the app might help. The
same .exe files copied to the desktop work fine. (Copied on the server they
don't work).

My guess is that explorer is still screwed somehow.

Sod alcohol - Linux looks ever more attractive!

 

[kpg]

#(2/14/2005 2:56:21 PM) #
Ah! Talking to myself eh?

Well, Ghost 2003 didn't have enough room, so that idea has gone out of the
window (I couldn't be arsed to find out how to configure it to work with
the
network at that time of night!)

I've downloaded SP2, and the PC now appears to connect to the other
machines
OK,

..BUT , trying to install apps off the server by double-clicking the
appropriate .exe file in Windows explorer results in a message (25% of
time?)
of -

"This application has failed to start because the application
configuration
is incorrect" and the helpful note that RE-installing the app might help.
The
same .exe files copied to the desktop work fine. (Copied on the server
they
don't work).

My guess is that explorer is still screwed somehow.

Sod alcohol - Linux looks ever more attractive!

Several of my clients get the error:

"This application has failed to start because the application configuration
is incorrect"

also, but only on the network drive When I copy the exe down to a local
drive it runs fine. When I have the program read the data from the original
networked drive (with an ini file change) it runs on the local drive and
reads the
network data just fine.

Other machines on the same network work fine (Win98). Some other XP
machine also work fine.

I have reports of at least three machine with this problem - all are XP Home
or
Pro all have down a windows update then the error occurred.

This particular exe uses an XP visual style manifest resource compiled into
the
exe to get xp user controls to display XP visual styles. I think this is
the problem
but I have not been able to test this yet.

Somehow I think that the update (maybe the .NET 1.1 portion) is not allowing
the manifest to run on the Intranet (network drive), but does allow it to
run on
the local drive.

Note that the exe is written in VB6, not .NET, but it uses a XP visual style
manifest,
which my research has shown if there were an error in the manifest file then
this
error would occur.

I think this is a new issue tied to the Feb 05 XP security updates.

Anyone with info please post reply.

TIA
kpg