Little Help Please

A friend just called, with a problem that I'm not 100% sure of, So I'm turning to see if anyone has more suggestions. They are using Window XP Home, and here is what I was thinking without seeing it for myself.

Their computer on start-up kept posting that "Photo gallery needs to finish installing". They never download photo gallery, so they decided to restore to an earlier date, back in March.

Now it boots to the user log on screen and when they click on any of the users, it starts to load then it goes to a blue screen with a new Pop-up saying "Need to install start-up disk to continue".
My thought was that the OS has become corrupt somehow and possibly the NLDLR is missing, but without having the PC here I'm can't check it for myself.

When I see them this weekend, I'm planing to run UBCD and also contect their HD to my Laptop and copy the files they can't afford to lose, and use the repair section of their OS, and try to fix it before a complete format and reboot. Unfortuneately they can't find it.

So is there any other suggestion, before I leave tomorrow for my visit.

 

If you can get to the desktop (use safe mode if needed), run the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. It will provide a list of all installed programs and you'll go through the list and remove the entries that are popping up the errors. It sounds like the installers for some programs (Photo Gallery is one) got corrupted, and now they are trying to 'fix' themselves by re-installing themselves.... if your friends have an HP printer, that explains where the Photo Gallery came from. It is one of almost a dozen things that gets installed when HP printer drivers are installed.
:-D
Good luck! I hope this helps!

 

Thanks dlb, I never did think about the windows installer cleanup tool.

Thats why I like to come here, just for when I get these brain cramps and can't see beyond my nose.

You guys always seem to wake me up

 

tune up utilities 2009 or your uninstaller.. clean all