Could this work?

Hi all...I posted a thread elsewhere about not being able to load a Delorme app [for a GPS mapping system] to my desktop. It does, however, load onto my two notebooks w/o difficulty, and all three machines are running XP Pro.

On the desktop [which exceeds both laptops in system specs., and greatly exceeds Delorme's operating requirements] it begins to setup, stops, gives me a "error loading W95INF32.Dll" message. The install then terminates.

I've turned all AV stuff off, gone into the system 32 files, replaced that dll, hidden it, removed it, replaced it, tried installing the app in safe mode, nothing works. Delorme's tech people [actually pretty knowledgeable...go figure!] say they haven't run into this problem.

My final attempt would be just to reinstall XP Pro over itself [since it's not an application glitch, but seems to be a corrupted sys 32 thing] and see if the problem gets resolved. The question is, whether or not this works, I can't think of anything it could hurt. Everything is backed up. Other than time spent reinstalling the OS, are there hassles I'm not aware of?

Have you tried running the install in a Application compatability mode? I'd try that first before the reinstall of XP.

Sorry...I should've stated that earlier in my topic. Compatability Wizard didn't work...in fact I've never gotten it to work on any application.

Also, I just tried this pm to load another app, [updated software from Intel for my webcam], and I'm getting errors on that now, too. It says it must be "loaded with the OS that it is intended for.." Which is what it is, but doesn't recognize. It has to be something corrupted in the OS.

Only thing I can think of is that I let one of my newphews load "Red Alert" on the desktop over the Holidays...I uninstalled the program, and then little glitches started happening....Hmmmmm!

Since you have an idea what caused the problems and you have a timeframe for it, why not do a restore to a point before the Red Alert install? If that is truly the prob, the restore should fix it.

Have you considerd a corupt CD?

And for the note did you get the same missing .dll when you removed it from the system?
if so suspect a bad Drive.

Thanks for the input everyone...problem solved!

After running the SFC tool, it showed nothing out of the ordinary. I had used system restore to a point before the games were loaded, w/o solving the problem.

Since I couldn't get any app to load, I thought I'd check to see if I could at least start an XP reinstall. That terminated itself, too, so it was a good diagnostic tool as far as I was concerned. Leading me to suspect some change to the system prior to the game install/uninstall.

Turns out it was a corrupted "Windows Update" download of the "compatibility wizard update." I don't know if the problem is inherent to the coding of the update itself, or just a glitch encountered during the download process. [I've got to believe it was the data transfer...]

After restoring to a point before that, everything is back to normal. I've re-installed all critical updates but the suspected wizard update, and all is well.

Thanks again for the brainstorming help!