hi all, when i try opening my hard drives by directly clicking on them i get an error message pop up saying: "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). click OK to terminate the application." however i can still access my hard drive(s) from the drop down boxes in my computer or any other window. any ideas as to why i can only access my hard drives this way and not by directly clicking on them? thanks in advance for any replies!!!
also the above problem occured over night, it was fine on friday evening, i fell aslepp and when i woke up it as doing this, the machine did not get turned off at all. also a system restore did not fix this, is the problem likely to persist after i re format my computer as well?. thanks
what application did this occur in ? presumably, it happened in Explorer of in my computer, it could be virus / spyware / malware have you done any scans in the last week & do you have IE7 installed ? which is very much NOT recommended on all forums, obviously not M$ forum, if you have IE7 uninstall it & install Firefox or opera if you want to continue to use IE7 then try uninstalling it & reinstall it IE7 is insecure & unstable, and Firefox also has many add ons one other thing to try if you have IE7 is: try running it without any add ons, to do this right click on IE7 icon and select start without Add-ons or something like that Edit: restore your system with system restore first, to how it was on the last successful but before you had these problems
thats right it happens when you click the hard drives in the my computer window (and when you click the desktop shortcuts i have as well ) . a spy ware scan is happening right now and hopefully that will fix it. if not i think im just going to reformat as everything is on my externals and it will probably be quicker to reinstall windows rather than try and find the exact problem that is causing this to happen. however any other suggestions please let me know cheers for the suggestion Donkey!!
yes, but do you have IE7 ? because, a format & reinstall takes a lot of time (at least a day) and it could be an application installed that is causing your problems, but, it could also be a virus / spyware / malware just trying to cover all the bases
:good: what antivirus & firewall combo are you using ? XP has IE installed, i think its 6.01, but don't quote me on that (because i haven't used XP for years) still try removing and reinstalling IE, although IE can never be fully removed from XP but you can remove & reinstall enough of it to rectify problems Edit: after reinstalling IE, IE will probably be the default browser
no luck, the IE7 solution didn't work, and neither did the system restore (restored it back to Monday when my computer was running like a dream) the problem still persists this also now has me worried that a re format may not fix it!!
