I have a problem with my installation of Windows. After about a week of uptime, during which the computer was running fine, my machine was rebooted. Suddenly, I get an error saying that shlwapi.dll is missing. I got a copy of it off another machine running the same OS version, Service Pack 4, V 5.0, I think the build number is 2195. Anyway, after putting shlwapi.dll on the machine, now I get a blank blue screen after logging in. Another interesting thing is that if I try using the shlwapi.dll file that is in the ServicePack directory under WINNT directory, I get a "Explorer has caused an error" message, but if I use the one off a seperate computer, it just goes blank with no error message. I can run task manager, but if I try running explorer.exe, it thinks for a second then does nothing or errors out, depending on which shlwapi file I'm using. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thank you very much in advance.

Nothing doen to machine - it just suddenly started with this message? any other issues with machine? could be a hardware issue, or just a file/filestore corruption. Could try running chkdsk from recovery console - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;229716. could try a repair reinstall - boot from 2k install CD, choose new install (NOT repair). It should find installation and offer repair - take this option (type R). This will leave data, apps, settings intact, loses windows updates. If your install CD is different service pack level to installation, you'll need to reapply service pack (also - may not find installation to repair in this case). You can create a 'slipstreamed' install CD which includes ther service pack if you've access to CD burner - eg http://www.bink.nu/bootcd/

Well a repair reinstall seems to have worked. It was very odd, and seems to have happened out of the blue. Apparently shlwapi.dll just went poof, but must have killed some things as well. Frankly, I think Norton is the culprit, but that's because I don't have any better suspects at the present time. Thanks very much for your help.