Free PC Support

[jonpreston]

i recently turned on my pc to find when i booted up i recieved the message "msgsrv32 has caused an error in kernel32.dll"
when i close the box NOTHING HAPPENS......... ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH
nothing at all loads up and when i Ctrl-Alt-Del the only task running is " cmdninst " of which i have no clue wot it is !!!!
i have tried booting in both Bootlog and Safe Mode but the exact same happens
i do not have the millenium edition disk to try to re-install it and have tried installing windows 98 but recieve a message along the lines of "not enough disk space, you will need at least 205mb to install windows 98 and may want to clear some disk space before installing"
it seems i have tried all i can and cannot find anything on search engines

PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP ME
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jjp

[pokefan_frank]

Nothing else happens because windows probably stops msgsvr from continuing to run to protect the kernel (The kernel is what controls what the Operating System does with your RAM, Processor, etc). Msgsvr is, as I recall Message Service: the program that displays dialogboxes and pop-up boxes for Windows. Once it's closed, Windows cannot tell you anything else.

Sounds like a virus ate your disk space, process list, etc. Can you reboot in DOS?

If you can, you can try to move through your harddrive using the "CD folder-name-here"(change to directory folder-name-here) command.

If you want to free up space to install Windows, the "RM filename.ext" (remove the file called filename.ext) DOS command should do, but be careful as DOS has no recycling bin nor progress bar, and doesn't ask you to confirm anything. You can also try the move command, and move some things to diskettes, but I don't remember its exact syntax right now, nor how to change the drive you're on

edit
cmdninist stands for "Config Manager Device Installer Launcher" according to http://www.fileresearchcenter.com/C/CMDNINST.EXE-5990.html
If this file is indeed the original windows file (meaning a virus has not overwritten it) there is a workaround that might work for you: Start up a Windows session (those that currently only give you cmdninist) open the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del or Ctrl-Shift-Esc) and click the "New Task" button. Type in "Explorer.exe" and you should get the start button, the bar it's on, and the icons on your desktop, to appear again.

If this doesn't work, it means something else Explorer needs working so that it can run is not running. For this, then, you're going to need the full task list of another Windows ME computer and try to get all those tasks running. This is basically what Windows does at startup time by itself. I don't know how to get all these things to start up automatically again, but a workaround may be to put them in the Start folder of the Start menu.

No guarantees though