ran cleaner and registry software now have system error

[help please]

I installed and used this program Windows XP: I used the CCcleaner basic cleaning and the Registry Cleaner selected all without thinking. I did click make a back up. However and I used the regedit software download and merged the back up. Nothing really happened. Im not sure what was supposed to, but had hoped the following would have been fixed. .

My computer is completely dead now.

 

At first all my programs dissapeared from the all programs tab and I could not run word, excel, itunes, anything except internet explorer, then I restarted and I now have the following message.

 

Windows cannont start because the following file is missing or corrupt

 

Windows root system\32\hall.dll

 

reinstall copy of above file

 

I must say I have never come accross a program that completely took out my computer. I am very worried as all my music and life pictures are on this computer. Please help if you can.

 

Thanks, If you dont know can you please give me advice on where I might find help. Thanks again.

[Caldor]

Theres no way CCleaner is going to fiddle with the hardware abstraction layer. Look in the ini's for yourself to see. Your problem is coincidental and the root cause lies elsewhere.

[JDPower]

I used the regedit software download and merged the back up

Regedit software download? What download is that?

 

What version of CCleaner did you use? Did you only use the cleaner and issues scanner or did you also use the uninstall and startup tools in the 'Tools' section?

[Caldor]

JDpower none of the versions of CCleaner ini's will do that. In fact it can't.

 

Also no application could ever need to change the hardware abstraction layer. In fact, its a protected windows system file that even when a virus tries to delete or modify it, windows will fix it immediately.

 

Your going up the wrong path on this line.

[JDPower]

Your going up the wrong path on this line.

I'm trying to help rather than just tell them they're wrong

[Caldor]

Your not helping by claiming incorrect things or taking a diagnostic line thats irrational

[hazelnut]

see here

 

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm

[Caldor]

While that article is helpful (thanks Hazelnut) I don't agree with the assertion in it that recovering from this situation requires a reinstall. IMHO the easiest fix is to boot the emergency recovery console and do a fixboot / fixmbr, or try the auto repair windows feature as a second option.

[hazelnut]

It does say to check first that the hal.dll is really missing and gives instructions on how to reinstall it.

 

Yes, a repair install would insure the system was repaired ( hopefully) without the loss of files, but as you know, sometimes this is not always possible.

 

Let's hope that the original poster can use the info above to at least find out what stage he is at.

 

@the original poster,

all that was needed to restore an "issues" backup was to right-click the backup file and choose merge. Using another registry software at the same time may have helped escalate your problem.

Please let us know how you go on.

[help please]

Ok thanks for all your help. I talked to Dell and they had to send me a new XP disk, and recovered my xp with reinstalling the boot.ini file and hall.dll file, which I have no idea how it was corrupted. I did nothing else except use this software and restart my computer.

 

I am troubled to say the least because all my programs microsoft word excel, all need to be reinstalled, and lucky me cant find the disk. Also I need to use remote desktop and its gone from my accessories file. all my programs are gone from the porgrams tab under the start tab. I obviously dont know what or hwothis all happened and I dont even know what the registry cleaner does. I merged the registry tab and had hoped it would fix the above problems however that does not seem to be the case.

 

My question:

 

Is there any way to have my computer go back the way it was before I used this CCleaner and registry cleaner. I have mcafee virus running could this mess things up.??

 

Thank you

[texmom]

Ok thanks for all your help. I talked to Dell and they had to send me a new XP disk, and recovered my xp with reinstalling the boot.ini file and hall.dll file, which I have no idea how it was corrupted. I did nothing else except use this software and restart my computer.

 

I am troubled to say the least because all my programs microsoft word excel, all need to be reinstalled, and lucky me cant find the disk. Also I need to use remote desktop and its gone from my accessories file. all my programs are gone from the porgrams tab under the start tab. I obviously dont know what or hwothis all happened and I dont even know what the registry cleaner does. I merged the registry tab and had hoped it would fix the above problems however that does not seem to be the case.

 

My question:

 

Is there any way to have my computer go back the way it was before I used this CCleaner and registry cleaner. I have mcafee virus running could this mess things up.??

 

Thank you

 

 

 

Can you not run a System Restore?

[Caldor]

Computers arent reliable - atleast the types your propbably using. That is, no raid, no ECC ram and so on. I will say again there is no possible way CCleaner had anything to do with corruption of a protected windows system file. This is the reason virus's arent common anymore but worms are, cos the attack vector of messing with protcted windows systems files was tightly closed years ago.

 

If you dont have backups you cant rollback. If your data is important to you explore raid and or off disk backup solutions.

[BamBam]

Hi. I installed the latest version of CCleaner yesterday and was pleasantly surprised when my notebook's response time dramatically improved. But the I discovered that HP Total Care wasn't working properly. I tried to do a system health check on my notebook after running CCleaner, and HP Total Care froze while analyzing my system. I tried all the other options in HP Total Care like Troubleshoot a Problem and Contact a Technician but it can't display the page. I've never had this problem before.

 

I tried to read the posts in your forum to find out if others were having the same problem, but everytime I opened your webpage McAfee reports a trojan in index.dat or something that can't be cleaned and that I should delete the file and scan my computer. I think the trojan's name had AUD somewhere in it, can't remember. I manually deleted the file, but I got the same warning from McAfee whenever I tried to open your webpage using link in CCleaner. When I ran McAfee I didn't get a "scan complete" verification in the end, it just stopped scanning. I'm not sure, but doesn't McAfee display a confirmation dialog box when it finishes scanning? I thought it did. :-o

 

Anyway, next I went to Microsoft Update and that froze, too. Luckily, it's working fine now. Maybe my computer just needed to restart. But the thing is, I found in Microsoft's list of available updates an optional update that I had already installed previously. I checked in the back-ups CCleaner made and found the update's name in several entries. What does that mean? Did CCleaner remove it? (By the way, HP Total Care still isn't working even after I uninstalled and reinstalled it.)

 

I used the default checked boxes in CCleaner when I did the scan - the entire Advance tab was unchecked and the two items above it, I think. I did the Registry cleaning, but I think I unchecked Unused File Extensions. After the HP Help & Support Feature went nuts and an update I previously installed disappeared, I unchecked the Help Files and Installer options, too, but I haven't cleaned the registry again. I've only done it once.

 

I really want to get to the bottom of this issue. I still want to use CCleaner; my laptop is much faster now, but the "side-effects" leave much to be desired. :-( Help.

 

 

P.S. I dont' know if I should have started a new post, but the title of this one seemed to fit my problem. :-o

[hazelnut]

Hellp Bambam

 

I don't use vista myself but I gather HP Total Care is an HP vista product.

 

You say you checked the CCleaner backups, did you not right-click and choose merge which would have restored any reg items from the issues scan you did?

 

Did you try system restore?

 

CCleaner does not remove windows updates, only the uninstallers, and only if you tick it in the advanced section.

 

I've seen various problems people have with this product such as here

 

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/6781...t-hp-asset.html

 

Also run your virus and malware scans again and if you are suspicious at all, post a hijackthis log in the hjt log analysis part of this forum.

[BamBam]

I'm actually using Windows XP SP2. I restored the registry items just now, still having a problem with HP Total Care though. There's one back-up file that just says "File" and not "Registration Entries". There's no option to "merge" when I right-click it. Just "open" and when I try to it lets me choose what program to open it with. Can't restore that back-up.

 

I'll try system restore tomorrow. Right now I have to go to sleep. I'll let you know if that fixes it. Thanks. :-)

[BamBam]

Hi, Hazelnut. I don't think I'll run system restore for now. Tried that once before and it added a lot of renamed files - such a mess and it didn't fix anything at all. :-( When I have time this weekend, I'll try to run the Driver & Application Recovery DVD that came with the laptop. I think it had the original HP Total Care application in there.

 

By the way, CCleaner deletes shortcuts to recently used stuff, right? Does deleting shortcuts cause programs to freeze? I was using MSWord this afternoon and I clicked on shortcut icons out of habit and MSWord just froze. Not Responding was what the Task Manager said. Waited about 5 minutes then manually closed it down. Is it just a coincidence that these things started happening last Saturday when I installed and ran CCleaner for the first time?

 

Here is a summary of the unusual stuff my laptop has been doing after the CCleaner installation:

 

1. HP Total Care can't run system health check, can't update software and hardware drivers, can't contact an online support technician.

2. McAfee Virus Scan reported a trojan with AUD somewhere in its name three times. All times the trojan couldn't be cleaned and had to be manually removed. All times it happened right after I opened a Piriform webpage.

3. Oh, and the first difference I noticed was in the appearance of my desktop wallpaper after restart - very sharp blacks and grainy edges. I reinstalled the graphics driver and image enhancement driver and it went back to normal.

4. MSWord froze after I clicked on a shortcut while editing a page.

 

I hope I don't encounter more unusual activity in the next few days when I start using my other programs. So far I've only used the programs mentioned above after I used CCleaner. :-o

[BamBam]

Thanks, by the way. Please let me know if there are any updates to CCleaner. I really like the speed of my laptop nowadays. :-) I'm going to run it on my desktop too. :-)

 

Oh, and by the way, when I first ran the Analyze feature on the Cleaner tab, it found almost 2GB of things to delete even though the entire Advanced tab was unchecked along with the two items above it. The Registry fixer probably added a lot more since there were a lot of files in there. Is that normal? I think I read some people state that theirs found 200+ or 300+MB the first time they scanned like that was a really big "saving" already. My hard disk usage before CCleaner had been a little over 9GB, after running CCleaner, it was down to just 7+GB (I keep all my laptop documents in an external hard disk). Now I'm wondering if maybe CCleaner erased some files it shouldn't have.

 

On the other hand, my laptop now responds a lot faster than before and I'm really happy about that. :-) Thanks again.

[JDPower]

Here is a summary of the unusual stuff my laptop has been doing after the CCleaner installation:

 

1. HP Total Care can't run system health check, can't update software and hardware drivers, can't contact an online support technician.

2. McAfee Virus Scan reported a trojan with AUD somewhere in its name three times. All times the trojan couldn't be cleaned and had to be manually removed. All times it happened right after I opened a Piriform webpage.

3. Oh, and the first difference I noticed was in the appearance of my desktop wallpaper after restart - very sharp blacks and grainy edges. I reinstalled the graphics driver and image enhancement driver and it went back to normal.

4. MSWord froze after I clicked on a shortcut while editing a page.

Given the amount of strange things going on and the fact you've had three virus alerts you should maybe post a HijackThis log in the relevant forum section to check if there's any virus or leftovers from a virus still there:

 

Instructions here: http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=10965

 

Post log here: http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showforum=12