crazy error message

my friend keeps having problems on his computer. he has a compaq presario, p4 1.67, 256mb ram, running XP. this is the error he keeps getting, "The application or DLL c\WINDOWS\system32\PNCRT.dll is not a valid windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette."

he says he gets this when trying to open media files with real one player and even certain major webpages.

dont know if this is means anything but apparently his anti virus software is "missing." he said that it just dissapeared overnight with no mention of uninstalling or anything. sooo yea, my first thoughts on the error message were maybe something wrong with his monitor drivers? i really have no idea but the "CRT" part may be important. can anyone help my friend out?

 

it's part of real player. you can search for and dowload the dll, but i'm not sure which sites are 'reputable'

 

Efi is right, it seems like this binary file belongs to RealPlayer, read more about it here.

What to do? Easiest thing would be to download that file from the net and replaced it with the bad one located at C:\Windows\System32. My suggestion? Update the version of RealPlayer you have or if it is already the most current, try uninstalling it, deleting the program folder then re-install it.