Topic: No Msinfo in XP

[Sandra]

When I click on Msinfo from system tools or from the icon in the folder or try and run it from the Run command the egg timer starts going them stops.Nothing opens and I dont get an error message.I thought the msinfo32.exe file may have got corrupted so replaced it with one from another PC with the same version of XP on as mine with the same results.
Damsel in distress,help appreciated  

[Simon]

This probably won't help, Sandra, but mine just opens up the 'Help' section, the same as clicking on 'Help and Support' in the Start Menu.  Have you tried that?  What are you actually trying to do?

[Adept]

I've tried looking in the Microsoft Knowledgebase and Googled about a bit Sandra, but I can't find any info on your problem yet.

Still looking though ...

[Sandra]

Actually it wont open that either Simon  
It worked ok on Friday after I put some additional memory in,so I suppose I could restore it back to what it was then but I have installed a lot of programs since then and would rather replace what I possibly deleted from the registry when I ran easy regcleaner yeaterday.
Normally Simon its like right clicking on My Computer with windows98 and going to properties.It gives you lots of information about your computer and how it is running  

[Adept]

Sandra, have a look in the Event Viewer Application and System Logs and see if anything is listed there about the problem.

You'll find the Event Viewer in Administrative Tools

[Sandra]

In the system viewer there are a few errors source acpi events 4 and 5.Says Bios is trying to write to an illegal 10 port address (0x4d1) which lies in the 0x4d0-0x4d1 protected address range.This could lead to system instability.

In applications,Source Userenv
got something saying it saved my registry while an app or service was still using the registry during log off.The memory used by the users registry has not been freed.The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

Source  MsiInstaller  event 1001
Detection of product (lots of nos ) feature Product Non Boot Files failed during request for component (lots more nos)

Source  MsiInstaller  event 1004
Detection of product (lots of nos ) feature Product Non Boot Files failed during request for component (lots more nos) failed.The resource C\doc an dsettings\all usere\application Data\microsoft Office\Data\Data.Bak does not exist.

I assume I somehow deleted the .Bak file when messing about.Maybe its hiding somewhere.If I have deleted it can it be re created as you know?

[Adept]

I don't think any of those events are anything to do with the msinfo problem Sandra

Just a thought; Do you have Microsoft Office loaded? If you do, try loading System Info from the Help|About menu in Word.

[Simon]

I was quietly wondering to myself if an XP 'Repair' from the CD would solve the problem?

[Sandra]

Sorry for the delayed response but it resolved itself BIG time in the early hours of this morning.
After I had checked in the logs as you suggested Adept,I couldnt find anything that looked like the cause.Sometime later my adsl connection dropped me and wouldnt re synchronise for a few minutes.I reconnected only for it to drop it again 5 minutes later and it refused to re sync at all.
I rebooted to see if that would sort it out  8)
My PC didnt manage to start windows again  
I got the dumping physical memory thing and after a couple of attempts tried to start it in safe mode.It wouldnt do that,wouldnt do the go back to last one that worked thing either.
I tried repairing XP with the installation cd but for some reason as it got to the point where it asks for regional settings (or about 30 seconds before) the screen just went blank and the installation/repair stopped.I repeated the process ( I am nothing if not stubborn   ) and it stopped at the same point again  >
At 4 am I decided it was too late to resolve it so I left it and went to bed  :'(
As I was still having it wanting to dual boot,even though I now only had XP on,I decided to wipe all the drive and being a bit masochistic used the seagate wizard utility to do a zero fill on the full drive.
Everythings back on and working fine now but I guess the reasons for what and why it did it will always be a mystery