One thing. Since it still boots and runs, MAKE BACKUPS OF ALL IMPORTANT DATA! KEEP THEM UP TO DATE. When you have known problems on a machine, back up your documents, photos, movies, music anything like that. Anything you have created. Anything you have collected. If your time is worth anything your data is worth more than anything else on your computers. But then back up applications too to the extent you are able.

I mean everyone should do this all the time. But when you have a machine with problems and it is not yet unbootable.Backup! You will kick yourself if you don'T.

Oh yeah, I already backed up. I hadn't backed up in six months!

Oh yeah. Backups. ALL Hard drives will ALL eventually die, some sooner than later. And then there are other problems, like OS failures and virus attacks, et cetera.

If Spike is right and I have to start reading e-books on an iPhone after using both a Kindle 1 and Kindle 2, I will be incredibly sad. By which I mean, I will simply have to go back to normal old books.

I will simply have to go back to normal old books.

The horror! Not that! Anything but that!

Whoa! Thank you, Internet!

c: windows inf unregmp2.exe /UpdateWMP

(...why are backslashes being removed?)

That fixed my wmp.dll error. Nice. Whew. It wasn't showing up in my Event Viewer, but the Event Viewer message someone else posted with a similar error ("Windows Media Player 10 Hotfix KB911565 installation failed") makes me think it could have been related to the Windows Update last night. Because WMP was working fine last night.

Okay, back to needing Media Center discs to either SFC or do a repair install. I wouldn't be able to do a repair install with an XP Pro disc, I presume?

Actually, since libmplayer.dll is in ffdshow, I'm going to try uninstalling and reinstalling the codec pack, since that's where the faulty file resides. I have no clue why Paint, IrfanView, Outlook Express, and Explorer would also be using it, but hey. I noticed that it's not in system32, which I think it should be? I'll try the codec thing on Monday; right now, I want to have a decent weekend camping.

I wouldn't be able to do a repair install with an XP Pro disc, I presume?

No.

Seriously, in the amount of time you have spent running around in circles on this you could have wiped and replaced the OS.

You make it seem like such a simple task. Wouldn't I lose everything and have to start from scratch? Reinstall everything, fix my settings to however I had them, hope I actually backed up everything I needed to back up. That's mentally and emotionally taxing for me. Maybe it's easy for you, but I don't deal well with that sort of thing.

If it does come to that, I can use an XP Pro and XP Pro SP2 disc to do the job, right? I've never done a reinstall before.

It also looks like my HP comes with a System Recovery option that resets to the factory settings; I think all the recovery information is on the D: drive so I don't need discs. Possibly. The website is a little unclear on how it works.

Yeah, it's a pain in the ass, but with years and years of using WinXP behind me, my experience is that it's one of the only ways to get a machine back to working normally. I just did it to 4 of my machines and it's amazing how much better they run. I'm also anal about making sure I keep install disks and license codes where I can get them.

Yeah, I agree with ND. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong; you could be chasing problems for a long time without getting everything clean. You definitely want to check for all your install discs and codes beforehand, and you almost certainly will lose something or other (check for applications that save their data in unusual places).

But seriously, it's the only way to be really clean and back to fast and you've spent a lot of time on it already. Wouldn't you be happier to be nuked and restored and on your way? Wouldn't that be less stressful than worrying about it every single day?

We just did it with the SO's machine, and I did my desktop recently. Still need to nuke my old laptop from orbit, but I got lazy. With the NAS now it's super simple for us.