windows going mental

today all sorts of crazy crap started happening in windowsXP, first off
the (default) firewall stopped working, and other probs, including AVG
updater won't work and reports bad install.

trying to enable the firewall reports:
"firewall settings cannot be displayed because the assocaited service is
not running. do you want to enable the firewall/ics?"

clicking yes just reports "can't enable firewall/ics". (yay!).

when i right click on my computer
"the application or DLL C:\windows\system32\esent.dll is not a valid
windows image. please check this against your installation date."

what the hell does that mean...?? it is a legitimate windows licence,
about 2 months old. i did a full virus scan with AVG and couldn't find
anything.

?

 

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_20709829.html

Check that out...should help.

 

Do you have all the latest XP updates installed? Check here for a
Windows KB article that might be relevant to your problem. Seems there
was a bug in Automatic Updates that would sometimes corrupt essent.dll

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910437

Alternatively, go....Start > Run sfc /scannow

That will replace corrupted OS files with known good versions.

 

That is probably because you have bigger problems.

Try this in safe mode:
http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
a-squared (a-squared) is a complementary product to antivirus software and
desktop firewalls on MS Windows computers. Antivirus software specializes
in detecting classic viruses. Many available products have weaknesses in
detecting other malicious software (Malware) like Trojans, Dialers, Worms
and Spyware (Adware). a-squared fills the gap that malware writers exploit.


Do you have any kind of anti-spyware installed, or have you been trusting
AVG to protect from all types of nasties it was never designed to do?

http://www.safer-networking.org/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

 

thanks - i will try it

 

i last updated on the weekend i think... heh would suck if a windows
update caused the problem hopefully copying the dll from the XP CD
will work...

 

lol yeah i guess so... i have NIS on my home machine though. i doubt its
a spyware/malware issue but will have a look at that program anyway,
thanks for the link.

 

that fixed my firewall - thanks AVG is still corrupted, but i think
that was because it screwed up during an update, i'll trash it and get
the latest NIS.

 

God no!
Stay with AVG, just reinstall it - It has a repair option then.

Fran