Assorted problems in XP Pro SP3

Internet Explorer is not opening..... well, it 'sort of' opens, meaning that when I launch it, it shows up in the Task Manager, but a window does not open, nor are there any errors. Also, when I opened Add/Remove Programs, it would open to an empty window. I read that an easy fix for this was regsvr32 appwiz.cpl which I tried, now the Add/Remove Programs window doesn't open at all!!! I already tried a repair install of Windows, and IE and Add/Remove Programs worked OK for about 2 reboots. Then they stopped working again. I have run sfc /scannow which did nothing, and I can't remember a single instance where running sfc has actually helped anything, ever. I have run Dial-A-Fix; malware scans come up clean; I installed IE8 thinking that fix IE, it didn't, IE still does nothing other than show up in the Task Manager; Firefox and Chrome work fine (a bit slow, but they open the internet and surf just fine). I've run hard drive and RAM diagnostics and they were clean; I'm in the middle of a rootkit scan right now, so we'll see what happens there, but I'm pretty sure that there's no infection. I'm really close to formatting and reloading Windows..... any suggestions?

 

Have you checked for a MBR infection?

 

Yes - no problems there either :banghead

 

Things are looking MUCH better!!! Out of the blue, after a reboot, the Add/Remove Programs started working again, so I uninstalled all the drivers; I uninstalled all Adobe software; I uninstalled all Yahoo software; I uninstalled all Google software; I uninstalled all MSN software and MS Silverlight and IE8. I rebooted, and just re-installed the drivers with the newest versions available. SO FAR SO GOOD!!!! Hopefully everything will remain functional!!!

 

Good Luck!

 

Thanks, but I think I spoke too soon!!! Everything looked good after 2 or 3 restarts, but then after the 4th, I'm suddenly getting "Page cannot be displayed" errors in IE, and "Cannot find server" in Firefox. I tried to ipconfig /release and renew and was presented with a "RPC server is unavailable" error in the command prompt window. So I ran a netsh winsock reset and rebooted, and now everything is back normal again. :confused :banghead It's enough to drive ya nutso!