I am running W2K Service Pack 4 and all was well until I downloaded the patches from Microsoft last week. Now I have to sneak on to Firefox and Outlook before the OS has entirely booted up or I find that whatever application I try to open, I receive the following error: The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Clik on OK to terminate the application.

I have sifted through hundreds of messages on various sites in the US, UK and Canada courtesy of various searches on Google. I have tried every supposed fix that I have found. I have gone into safe mode and used the Last Known Good Configuration option and it returns me to the date when the problem started happening. I am at my wit's end.

I have not installed any hardware or software since Patch Tuesday. I am running Zone Alarm, Avast AV, Spybot and Ad-Aware and there is no sign of a virus or trojan. Looks to me like there is a problem with an MS patch, and I found evidence a year or so ago that the same thing happened with an earlier set of patches.

Is anyone else having the same problem? Has ANYONE been able to come up with a way to deal with this short of reformatting and reinstalling the OS? Any help would be very, very much appreciated.

WT

Hello dusty2u,

Welcome to pchf,

Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 was a disaster! Microsoft had created more problems with SP4 than they had actually fixed!

I would recommend uninstalling your latest service pack using Add/Remove programs, and continue with SP3. If not listed there, you can use the following program:

WinUpdatesList v1.13 - View Windows Updates (Service Packs and Hotfixes)

Hello, Nat!

Thanks for the welcome and the link. WinUpdatesList is a great little program and it enabled me to see which patches were installed in October. Of course, I had to go into safe mode to run it.

At any rate, I uninstalled those patches and restarted. No luck the first time, but the second time everything worked. Then when I started the computer this morning, the problems were back. Very strange. I looked into uninstalling SP 4 but it does not appear on my list of add-remove programs.
The SP Rollup does, however. If I uninstall that, would it take me back to SP 4, SP 3, or back to no service packs at all? I am pretty sure I still have the uninstall files.

I have been running SP 4 for months with no problems. Why would they start now? I have a few more patches from September that I want to uninstall and see what happens. If uninstalling SP 4 means booting from the CD and dealing with the Recovery Console, I don't know if I am up to that.

Your thoughts? BTW, I really appreciate your prompt reply to my initial message.

WT

Hi dusty,

Sorry, I've investigated you issue further, and it looks like this particular problem may actually be a malware issue. I need you follow the "PCHF Prework" link on my signature. Follow the instructions there, and post your log back here. A member of the security team will check out your log an post a fix. In the meantime I will keep an eye on this thread to make sure your issue is resolved. I would still recommend sticking to SP3 if you can. If this is a malware issue, it could be a result of SP4 vunerability (one of many!).

Hello again!

I followed your link, then downloaded and installed SpySweeper and Hijack This. I followed the instructions to clean out the cache and cookies. With SS I had a problem saving the results in safe mode because my monitor is going south and I can't run it at high enough resolution that I can see all the options when the scan is done. At any rate, it found one instance of adware and that is it. I ran the scan twice. With HJT I was able to save the log as a text file. Do I paste it in to one of these messages or do I attach it? The only thing I have any question about is "nwiz.exe." There is an nVidia chip in this computer but I don't know if this program should appear in quotes. Nothing else on the page does. I can account for virtually everything else after comparing it with a variety of other HJT logs that I was able to locate.

About every 3rd or 4th time I boot up the computer, everything is fine. The rest of the time I cannot open anything unless I can click on it before the firewall and the anti spyware software are up and running on the desktop.
Very strange.

Thanks again for your help.

WT

Yes, you can attach the log here.

Did you try to disable both to see if it would make a difference? What firewall and anti-virus software are you running? It's unlikely to be this, you would normally get just "Page cannot be displayed" if it was being blocked by one of these, but just to be sure.