Strange misconfiguration of settings

Hi guys,

After a merry go round with 1st line MS support suggesting irrelevant Mr. Fixits etc, I thought I'd turn to you all to get to the heart of a solution. I kindly appreciate any assistance in manually returning my machine to a normal state.

In the last week of Sp1 updates, my machine has suddenly become unable to open certain applications which used to work fine. Two I am aware of are:

1. Any OpenOffice executable (e.g. scalc.exe, swriter.exe, etc) - Upon launch, error displayed is "The application has failed to start because its side-by-side information is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail." After uninstalling it and associations going to WordPad, I'm getting the same error when clicking on an RTF file for example, but WordPad starts anyway. WordPad opens fine when manually opened. Not so with OpenOffice, which doesn't open.

2. Adobe Reader X - Upon launch, error displayed is "Adobe Reader Protected Mode - Adobe Reader cannot open in Protected Mode due to a problem with your system configuration. Would you like to open Adobe Reader with Protected Mode disabled?" Consequently, if we select the option "Open with Protected Mode disabled" and continue, an error appears: "Fatal Error - Acrobat failed to load its Core DLL".

As an attempted solution, I've un-installed both Adobe Reader X and OpenOffice, restarted, and attempted to re-install from freshly downloaded installers. The exact same errors persist.

Causes? I'm not sure which is the cause of my problems, but two notable things I recall in the last week was a series of automatic Win 7 updates being pushed to my machine, and also the automatic detection and removal of malware (Dynamer!.dtc) by Microsoft Security Essentials. So I suspect it might be Security Essential's automatic removal of this not being complete due to unexpected behaviors of this resilient trojan, or a disruption in MSE's removal process due to Windows 7 having been in an unrestarted state between a series of updates awaiting configuration, or maybe it's totally unrelated to this and just some messup purely of the Windows updates, or other.

But all I want is a solution! I need to be able to open Reader and OpenOffice after installing them. I hope I can avoid having to do a re-format and clean-install of Win 7 again, given that sometimes people say when Sp1 is installed you can't Repair the installation, but I don't know, I haven't tried , maybe I should or is there another way?

I'm not a super power techie beyond the above but I can follow instructions well; any help in returning my operating system to normal so I can successfully launch these applications would go a long way.

Thanks and regards!

Have you done a system restore to a date prior to the beginning of the problem?

Have you run sfc /scannow from a command prompt?

Have you done a full malware scan?

Ignatzatsonic: Tried System Restore now - the only previous restore point before the updates is like, a year ago when I first installed Windows, so that's out. After the original trojan was removed last week, full scan with Microsoft Security Essentials and MalwareBytes found no threats, so there's likely no actual malware left on my machine. Have just run SFC /scannow... no integrity violations found.

Fseal: "As an attempted solution, I've un-installed both Adobe Reader X and OpenOffice, restarted, and attempted to re-install from freshly downloaded installers. The exact same errors persist." So I conclude that the problem is a Windows one as it retains the same problem after re-installing these applications.

Have you considered a repair install? I've never personally done it, but it seems to be the last resort other than reinstalling Windows from scratch. You might uninstall Adobe and Open Office before you begin if you try it.

Thanks for those tips guys; I was hoping to exhaust all ideas before trying the Repair Install, as it means I have to free up 9 gigs of hdd to work and then might tell me it won't since I've patched windows already with SP1. I guess I'll have to make time for that in the coming days unless someone else posts who'se seen this thing before or something. Best

Thanks Ztrucker,

I'm going to give that a shot and post back. Strangely, besides the restore point from a year ago, the most recent (and only other) one I could find was created after the removal, not after SP1.

best

It didn't work - uncannily, the problem remained. But your suggestions helped me get to a solution... I am really happy to say, all problems gone!

I tried your initial suggestions Ztruker:

Uninstalled Adobe Reader 10.0.1
Uninstalled LibreOffice
Uninstalled all 15-20 Windows & Security updates installed since problems began Apr 27 including SP1
Restarted machine

Then to my surprise - Windows 7 updates are like malware themselves, even after uninstalling all of them and restarting, not only did the same ones reinstall on reboot, but something like 3x the original number of updates were installed, including Hotfixes etc!!!!! What the hey!

Fortunately after turning off automatic updates, I caught SP1 before being reinstalled, and unchecked all.

Then:

Installed LibreOffice
Installed Acrobat Reader 10.0.1

Tested launch --- same problems. That got me thinking hmm, if SP1 is uninstalled but these other updates were, maybe it was a problem with one of those other series of updates. So I investigated their descriptions and found one related to Visual C++, which I found a little strange, but thought may have something to do with applications not running right. So I googled for both my problems. And it was really hard to find a solution, but bingo:

I found a post on MS Answers that suggested uninstalling and reinstalling Visual C++ 2008 to refill missing libraries. I looked and found in my Installed programs list, something strange - Microsoft Visual C++2008, and an update to that KBXXX, Microsoft Visual C++ 2005, and an Update to that too. The updates were installed at the same day Windows Updates were delivered. Something with either windows updates, the trojan removal, or the proximate timing of both, led to MS probably delivering nonstandard fixes/updates that led to wrong library info. I just uninstalled all 4 - given that Win 7 should include Visual C+ 2010 and doesn't need these old ones - and presto! LibreOffice, Wordpad, and all apps open fine now. If any still gives a problem I'll just reinstall the latest version(s) of Visual C++.

Except for Adobe Reader X ... which stayed dysfunctional. Using goole search tools to find most recent entries in the last week, I managed to land on a fresh post on the Adobe support site:

Announcement: Would you like to help us improve Adobe Reader?

Hi All,

We have had a few bug reports related to Adobe Reader X protected mode coming in from you in this forum. We have addressed a large number of them in our upcoming Reader update and we would like to hear your feedback.

To that extent, we would like to invite you to the Adobe Reader Prerelease program and try out the latest build. To participate, please fill in the form available at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform...er_prerelease_ interest and indicate Adobe Reader as the product of your interest.

We look forward to your active participation, feedback and help towards making Reader a better product.

Thanks and regards,
Adobe Prerelease Team

So these turned out to be two separate issues that happened to come at the same time, confusing the source.

I'm now reactivating automatic updates and reinstalling all updates.

Hope this benefits other Internet users in the future who have the same problem and may be helped by this, as I found a lot of past frustrated ones on the net with no answers on forums to this problem including this site.

Thanks to all who contributed. Much appreciated.