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I had a very similar problem with Win98 once, where Outlook decided that it would launch TWO copies of the browser but the first one didn’t behave. In fact it didn’t do anything but annoy me. And if I typed a URL in the address box, zilch.

Try this first:
START -> RUN
REGSVR32 shwdocvw.dll

You should get a message that it succeeded. Try rebooting and see if IE will work then.

You also have the option of going to the ‘Last Known Good’ menu under NT and restoring a previous registry, and under 98, SCANREG /RESTORE from DOS to accomplish the same.

Good luck!!

Most of this is the way IE is coded – and I agree that it’s rude behavior. Very rude. So bad that I want it to stand in the corner.

However, this trick works on a lot of other apps – so give it a shot. If it is an icon that you are clicking on, hold down shift and double click. This should launch the app in the background. With IE, your chances are iffy.

This will not solve the problem when you click on links out of Outlook, for example, which is running a componetized version of IE and control is not returned to Outlook until IE decides to do so.

Hi Tony,

I am trying to determine after reading your post if you are logging on with adminitrator privileges, or actually as administrator.

Sounds as if you know this already but the NT-based operating systems keep separate registries for each user. You could try using REGEDT32 (as an administrator) and copying the SOFTWARE tree. Office is primarily stored under HKCUSOFTWAREMICROSOFTOFFICE, but I bet you dollars to donuts that there’s other various things scattered throughout the OS that will make this a risky venture at best. Can’t hurt to try it if you have a current backup though.

Good luck, and maybe someone else will even know definitively whether you can do this or not!

The best possible way to proceed and ensure a stable environment is to install the apps one at a time, then the service pack – and wait at least a week to see if the machine behaves. If you’d rather do it all at one, you can install multiple apps and save the service pack for afterwards. The main reason for doing so is because ill-behaved programs will overwrite core OS files – so as long as the thing boots and behaves, install away, so long as you reapply the service pack as the very last thing you do.

That mightnot be documented anywhere but in practical application it works.

When you say you re-installed Win2k, was it a clean install or did you re-install over existing OS?

The other thing that would be helpful in troubleshooting this is the additional information from the Event Viewer – what is the event ID, and what is the source?

It sounds as though you are sending bad data to the print spooler and it’s shutting down. Try running the System File Checker, which will scan for corrupt OS files. And you can also attempt to re-install the service pack – a pain but seems to fix a number of weirdnesses. Microsoft had good intentions when they designed the new service pack installs (meaning you weren’t supposed to have to do this sort of thing) but practical experience tells me that it’s not quite what it was intended to be.

Try at least applying SP1 and see if it fixes the problem.

Hi Lynn,

It’s been my experience that you can re-order the pop-up menu that you create on the taskbar, but if you add or remove an item from the actual desktop, it can automatically sort the pop-up menu by name after you reboot. I haven’t spent much time troubleshooting that particular problem since I keep it there primarily for access to My Documents, My Computer and Network Places.

My first question would be, do you have the Service Pack installed, or any of the compatibility updates? How about DirectX 8?

What kind of sound card is intalled in the PC, also? If it’s a Creative Live! there are recent drivers available directly from their website.

And of course, you have surely checked your connections, making sure the card is firmly seated and that the cable is not loose…

Edited by Eileen on 01/01/10 15:58.

(URL Tags added by Eileen!)

Actually, I found a fix for the problem – or apparently so. There is a patch available for Windows ME that resolves some networking issues and it has fixed two of the three PCs that were experiencing the problem so far.

FYI, on of the machines is an AMD-450 with 128 meg of RAM, and an 8GB hard drive – which should be more than sufficient to handle the load.

The patch I found is available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/win…/272991usam.exe%5B/url%5D, and the Knowledge Base article is at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ar…s/q272/9/91.asp%5B/url%5D.

What this patch has to do with the lockups is unclear, but since networking problems commonly cause Windows lockups and hangs, it’s always worth a shot.

Kind of sounds like some recently uninstalled software caused the blue screen. As far as the login, you apparently have an invalid password that is being stuffed. That’s all that Win2k does at logon, if you opt for single user mode – it sets a flag in the registry to auto-login and hides the password prompt from you.

Right-click the My Computer icon and select Manage. Under Local Users and Groups you can check the password of Administrator, and change it – when you installed Windows 2000 it asked you for a password. If you don’t remember what that was, then getting around it could take a long time.

You can also install TweakUI 2000 and remove the auto-login feature. From your description it sounds as though the password it’s stuffing is incorrect and you’re logging in anyway.

I don’t know that this would solve anything, but you can run the system file checker to verify the integrity of your system’s software. Takes a while and wants the CD but a
worthy endeavor.

%windir%System32sfc.exe /scannow

I’m assuming you have SP1 installed – if not, you should install it.

This actually isn’t an Internet Explorer feature. Web pages can be coded to expire if form information is posted in them. It may be that IE is just a little better about following the rules.

The idea behind this is to expire the data for security reasons. Many sites use it – particularly online email. Unless someone else out there knows of a cool trick, I don’t believe there is a workaround for it.

And hey, life is short, use all the cute little icons you wish!

If you install to D: that’s fine – a word of caution (?) that may save you some grief down the road.

A lot of software, even in this day and age, is hard-coded or assumes that you will install on C: no matter what. Some apps insist on installing there, others seem to work better if you install them there (Office for example, which I had unbelievable and duplicatable problems with after changing the default install path).

You can rectify this up front with TweakUI by setting the Program Files directory right after you install. Remember, there’s an updated version out there that’s ME compatible, and also works with 98. I would strongly recommend that you grab a copy, isntall it, and set some defaults for each OS after you install it.

Good luck!!

If you need real-mode DOS, you’d be best off using Windows 98SE. If you modify the plumbing for ME, you are running a serious risk of undermining your system’s stability, and further you void yourself of any product support from Microsoft and/or the PC manufacturer.

ME will run DOS applications from within a window without a hitch, but you cannot set any AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS parameters anymore. (I used to use these to run scandisk in real mode and to delete temp files, among other things.)

Don’t fear the loss of the real mode DOS prompt. It’s a good thing, really – all future versions of Windows are going that direction, and although real mode startups can be a life saver, NT administrators have gotten by with much worse for along time.

Happy DOS-ing!

You can pull it off, but since Win9x wants to be the only operating system on a given PC, you’ll need third party software to do it, such as BootMagic, Boot Commander, or similar.

Make sure that you install each OS into something other than the default WINDOWS subdirectory, such as WIN98 and WINME, so that the system files do not overwrite each other (among other ugly nasties).

Good luck.

After reviewing all the other posts, I thought that there was one thing missing that everyone seems to know but has not said in a qualitative manner.

Windows 2000 is a business oriented operating system, period.

Yes, it has plug and play, and yes, it is stable, and my own opinion is that this is Windows the way it’s always been intended. For home use, who cares if you have it automatically logon and use admin privileges? Most people have used the 9x line for years with its myriad insecurities and now that they know wbout the security inherent in the NT code base, it’s an issue.

That goes back to the original statement: Windows 2000 is for businesses. ME was intended *only* for the home market. ME is Windows 98 with a few minor tweaks, as the version number belies. It’s got the Windows 2000 UI, and it’s got some other useless things – HTML help centers – and no real-mode DOS at boot. Kind of like NT/2000.

Use Windows 2k at home if you con’t care about a few games running. By and large, and as software patches are released, most things will run under 2000 – including DOS apps.