Hello everybody! I have a serious problem with my XP box! Facts: 1) installed windows xp sp1 integrated - worked fine 2)got network running etc. 3)shut down the system. booted up the same day later and a message appeared that some recovery had been compleated successfully (no further info - just that some recovery was successfully completed) Symptoms after that: 1)could not access network connections - open network connections folder and there where no connections present. using ipconfig i saw that the connection is pressent and working, but i could not create a new connection (i could using the wizard, but no connection icon appeared - so i can't create a connection with a static ip) pressed f5 and got the error: "The Network Connections Folder was unable to retrieve the list of Network adapters on your machine. Please make sure that the Network Connections service is enabled and running." Checked that - all services and dependencies are up and running! 2)there are more symptoms - cannot search the hard drive. search doesn't work. i select search from start menu - nothing happens. 3)one more symptom is when i access System Information (msinfo32.exe) - the following error occurs: "Can't Collect Information Cannot access the Windows Management Instrumentation Software. Windows management file may be moved or missing." I checked this service and dependencies too!! I'm totally lost!!!! Any help would be great (I know I can reinstall, but that doesn't guarantee that i woun't get the same errors again! i have this the 2nd time. no such errors with windows xp pro without sp1) Thanks in advance!

Are you using a 'copied' XP on this machine? Try pressing F8 after POST is completed and select 'Last Known Good'. If this doens't bring up a Windows XP system, then you'll waste less time by reinstalling XP.

i've just had exactly the same thing happen to me with all symptoms you describe. I've tried the F8 Last Known Good but it didn't work. Any other ideas anyone?

I have this exact same problem with the same symptoms, just appeared overnight after "recovering from an error". My copy of XP is definitely legitimate, holograms and all, and since breaking the seals on it I've installed and activated it on only one machine. I really don't want to have to reinstall without knowing what caused this, its taken me nearly 2 weeks of work to get all the software installed as it is :(

OK, I found what seems to be a partial solution, albeit by a somewhat random method: http://www.rhebus.com/#tt9 I downloaded the rereg.bat from there to this my #1 pc (my #2 pc was the "dead" one). Opened it up just to check I'd read the commands correctly, then using command prompt edit on #2 I made a duplicate of the Windows XP rereg.bat on my #2 machine; what it basically does is run regsvr32.exe /s on every .dll and .ocx in your windows\system32 directory. Somehow a vital dll must've got itself unregistered. This cured my network connection and search files problems, however the WMI is still AWOL which is rather worrying. I ran chkdsk over my boot drive and it turned up an error in the drive image which was corrected. That may be incidental. I know I ran Norton WinDoctor 2 days ago, which suggested I prune a whole load of activex/com entries.. can't think that would affect me 2 days and 10+ reboots later though.

Excellent, this has worked for me too thank-you very much. Hopefully you will come up with a solution for WMI as well. Once again thanks

I tried a variety of things to try and fix the WMI problems (hard to diagnose as the WMI service starts just fine). In the end I gave up and went for a repair install by booting from the XP cd, not using the repair from recovery console option but choosing install, then repair. Having used similar option on win2k I was pleasantly surprised to find that XP not only fixed the problems but retained 90% of my settings, including applications installed, control panel settings etc. I'm fairly certain the problem is caused in the first place by some dlls somehow getting unregistered, but I don't have the tools/time/energy to find out exactly which ones.