There was a problem sending the command to the program

[Trond Ruud]

All of a sudden, some of the basic system functions in XP(SP1), such as
right clicking a folder and selecting "Search" in the right click menu no
longer work but just yield the message "There was a problem sending the
command to the program." Could XP be infected with a virus? I've just
reinstalled XP from scratch after experiencing this problem for a while, but
that hasn't cured the problem. I have the latest version of the Zone Alarm
firewall, and run Norton Antivirus 2003 on a regular basis, so I find it
hard to believe the reason can be a virus. Anyway, re-installing does not
seem to be the answer(?) Several Win98SE FAT32 data partitions are shared
between Win98 and XP on my machine, however, so I guess its possible that a
virus can hibernate and spread to the reinstalled XP from one of the common
data partititions
Trond Ruud,
Norway

 

[David Candy]

Try disabling zone alarm.

 

[Trond Ruud]

Try disabling zone alarm.

That removed the problem. Thanks!
But it leaves me open to other problems I suppose.
Is there some tweaking that I can don to ZoneAlarm to make it stop
sabotaging Windows XP system functions?
I've browsed their support pages, but found nothing about this.
Trond Ruud

 

[David Candy]

I don't know the cause of the problem. And people like you tend to not want to know why? If one knows why then one can predict. XP's inbuilt firewall is as good as any.

1. Disable netbios over TCP/IP (search help for Configuring WINS).

This is my suspect (an incorrect network configuration)