You've spent, what, three days on this issue...? Save yourself any more grief
Some issues can be talked/walked through, others are not worth the aggrevation to bother with the journey
Time for drastic measures...ultimately, you may have to re-format or do a more drastic F-disk...but you did not hear that from me, as only the STAFF can advise that...
1. Burn off what you can save, of the necessary files, and then download the software version of SP2 from MS ...see if you can install it over the existing formatting...defrag...
[N.B. the defragging will overwrite empty spaces so be sure needed stuff is secure]
...if successful, go to the Add and Remove command in the Control Panel, and check to see if it appears now, if so, uninstall it from there...defrag...
...if not...back to square one.
2. Remove any and all 3rd party software *.exe files to disks [reinstall later from disk] and then delete from hard drive, except XP-SP1/2, so that all you have is just the bare bones of XP as originally installed, leaving other files alone...personal stuff...defrag...
3. Reinstall some of the crap cleaner progs suggested in this forum...run them one at a time, as loaded...defrag when done all progs...
[re-installing progs will overwrite empty spaces, so be sure it's safe]
4. Reinstall some of the other maintenance progs suggested as well...run them one at a time, as loaded...defrag when done all progs...
5. Reinstall XP-SP2 from the original disk, over the other copy...defrag...chkdsk...
6. Check to see that all Windows options are still there and functioning properly...run Windows Defender...
7. Reinstall your internet browser and run Trend's House Call service...if it works, move to next item...
8. Reinstall TREND INTERNET SECURITY and see if it now loads and functions properly...
9. If it does not reinstall...It's at this point, that I would
ask STAFF if it's o.k. to go ahead and format...
If it was me, I'd go right down to bare metal and Fdisk
But that's just me...I've got that experience
Edited by b1caez01, 02 December 2006 - 06:42 PM.