Win98 Control Panel inaccessible

[Guest]

Hey all,

I got a question for you... here's the deal. My father has a computer that is rather old, running 982nd and a P2 233 (I think). Just today he tried to go into the Control Panel to do… something... but the control panel was inaccessible. The icon for it is there under My Computer, but when he tries to open it, the computer thinks for a bit and then takes him back to the desktop. During all this the icons in the task tray next to the clock disappear. Have you heard of such a thing? And if so, do you know how I could fix this for him... or is it a lost cause and I need to just have him reinstall? Any help would be appreciated. Let me know if you need more information.

Thanks,
Maya


Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.

 

[camieabz]

With My Computer or Win Explorer find the file control.exe in the Windows folder. Double click on it and see if the same thing happens.

What programs are running behind the scenes?

When did this start happening?

I remember doing a registry tweak to give me a taskbar menu control panel and it gave me a couple of bugs on shutdown. Not writing down where and what the tweak was and the original settings etc I did a format & re-install to correct it (not advised but a final answer to the problem).

Try to determine whats different about the system (new installations, hardware etc). This may be why this bug is happening.



<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

 

[Guest]

as far as I know there is nothing new with the computer. He has all sorts of crap running in the background much of it I have never heard of, I guess it's stuff that came with the computer, but he has not installed anything new with in the past few weeks, and it just started today.

Thanks for the replies.
Maya


Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.

 

[Guest]

little more info: I had him check that control.exe file, and it did the same thing as the other times he tried to get in to the control panel... is it possible that control.exe is corrupted somehow?

Enjoy,
Maya


Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.

 

[Guest]

Here is what i would do. Firstly backup the whole computer on to floppy, or maybe even cd. Then make a startup disk. Once you have done that you should go into dos and type format c:. say yes to everything and press enter when it says enter for no characters. Once you have done this restart the computer making sure that the start up disk is in the floppy drive. Then click on start windows with cd rom support. Once done insert the operating system disk into the drive and run setup.exe. Follow the on screen instructions. When windows is installed, using your floppy put all your files back onto the c: drive. Once done make sure you have all your drivers installed properly. By now you should have your control panel working! If not please email me and try to assist you further. Good Luck!

 

[camieabz]

Start by running scandisk.
Then see if you can get the latest download of your Anti-Virus program, and run it.

If this shows nothing, then think about either:

1. Replacing control.exe
2. Re-installing Windows (without formatting:this can solve system problems)
3. Formatting C: (a last resort. Only do this if you have a full back-up of all critical files - OS, hardware & personal.) Before trying this, I'd ask around at the motherboards and chipsets forum.

<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I was thinking the same thing, I'll let you know what happends.

Maya

Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.