Serious Windows Errors

doodah · 14 Nov 2009 at 13:33

Friend of mine seems to be having serious problems with his laptop. It started acting up, suspicion was a virus from an IT friend at his work place. Not long after Windows claimed it needed a new battery (“battery cannot charge”). He gave to a another friend at work and it seemed to be fixed.

However, not long after more serious problems started occuring. When trying to connect to 3 mobile broadband a pop-up would state:

Windows cannot access the specified device path

Another pop up said:

You may not have appropiate access

He tried uninstalling the 3 software but it wouldn’t run the uninstall properly.

After an explorer crash, he tried to see what the problem was with the task manager, I “think” he tried to close a crashed program but suprise suprise another pop up stating “If you go ahead, you might lose your data”. There is more. After a restart all his desktop icons had duplicated on his taskbar and a further two errors continued coming up. One stated something like this:

Application error exception, system error EOLE SYS ERROR in module skype.exe @ 00095A71 RPC server is unavialable

The final error said:

wireless config notification dll has not been register and will not work correctly

I don’t even know where to begin, seems like the whole thing is borked (I haven’t seen the laptop myself). I am assuming Windows (XP) is corrupt? Could this just be a software problem or potentially a hardware one too? If it is just software, can just reinstall Windows. Not sure on the model but it is a three year old Dell laptop.
Any ideas?

doggs · 14 Nov 2009 at 13:58

Reinstall Windows, put some anti virus on. If he still has issues, then it's a hardware related problem.

theheyes · 14 Nov 2009 at 15:11

Reinstall if possible, but I would also check the memory and hard disk as well.

doodah · 14 Nov 2009 at 16:45

He is a complete techo-phobe, is it worth sending him a memtest CD? Is there a program to test the HD?

theheyes · 14 Nov 2009 at 17:12

I'd be testing the memory out of thoroughness just to rule it out to be honest, it sounds like the install is borked like you said. You can run chkdsk off the Windows XP CD but if he is a technophobe then he probably won't be able to manage it.