Mysterious problem with icons

[Steve]

Last used my laptop Friday in the office, no problems at all. Just hooked it up here at home and booted it up.

SpySweeper and AdWatch started going nuts about attempts to change registry settings, home pages, etc. Near as I can tell our SOHO firewall (DI604) is working fine.

Of course, I blocked all attempts at registry mods.

But no all of my program icons on my task bar have no icon except for the generic "unknown program" icon. Same with all the icons on my task bar and in my start list.

So what the hell happened? McAfee hasn't squawked. I've no idea what the problem could be????

[bruzzes]

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_20835672.html

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_20851509.html

Maybe these links can get you started on troubleshooting.

[Steve]

Well, what wonderful fun this has all been.....NOT!

Guess what happens to your OS when rundll32.exe gets corrupted, folks? Can you say "full re-install"? I can! Don't know how it got corrupted, but there you go.....couldn't run regedit, couldn't run any executable, couldn't do anything! :(

IBM has a re-install option as part of the boot process, but I figured that'd also re-install all of their useless laptop bloatware, too, so I grabbed a copy of XP off the shelf, deleted the entire partition, reformatted, and re-installed. Thank God for regular backups to the network drives, hm? :)

Still and all, I've got a whole messload of program reinstalls to run. I figure with everything I use, it's a solid 12 hours of babysitting installers.....

On a plus note, I got my new Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Elite set. What a keyboard! First one I've ever seen that actually have useful buttons layed out logically (besides the normal stuff, of course).

Pray that you never get a corrupted rundll32.exe my friends!

[mrRT]

why did you do the complete re-format Steve instead of choosing the repair option..It would have saved you a ton of time on the software reloads...

...unless of course it was completely necessary for the format... I have had that happen in the past too.....

[Steve]

I tried the repair, actually. It got to a point where a very familiar box popped up, something like "Windows can't open the file rundll32.exe. What would you like to do?" None of the repair nor restore options worked.

On the plus side, this little ol' laptop is screaming, now! ;)

[mrRT]

I tried the repair, actually. It got to a point where a very familiar box popped up, something like "Windows can't open the file rundll32.exe. What would you like to do?" None of the repair nor restore options worked.

On the plus side, this little ol' laptop is screaming, now! ;)

That blows abou the rundll file (usually indicates a major compromise of OS integrity).....but sometimes there are just so many "flesh wounds" to the OS that a re-format is necessary to stop the chronic bleeding...heheheheh

[Steve]

I'm not going to complain too much. I've been doing this since GEM Desktop was the only GUI interface for wintel boxes and it's the first time I've ever had to reinstall the OS :)