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#1
Constant .dll errors trying to do anything on Windows 7
I'm having some major problems trying to use any of the actual computer services or Microsoft-specific programs. I can access Control Panel and some of the sections, but most of them either say they fail to load or (null). All administrative tools refuse to load, and sfc /scannow is unable to be run at all even in safe mode. Safe Mode has the same error messages as base mode.
The problem is specifically "The procedure entry point could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll", this shows up whenever I try to use anything Microsoft related. Firefox loads up just fine including watching stuff via Flash Player, programs like Steam load up just fine (Though I haven't tested games yet), and I can normally browse My Computer just fine, however trying to do something like opening MS Paint is impossible, running Media Player Classic isn't possible, Aero doesn't want to load at all so I just have the default taskbar, Windows Updates refuses to load for about 20 minutes and then when it finally does it says it has an error, things like viewing the error reports don't even load a window, and so on. There is also a massive error that happens when I try to log in, there's a lot of Hexidecimal error messages that show up, I'll see if I can attach a picture but I'm not sure if it's possible.
This computer was fine up until this morning when I turned it on. I nor anyone else have installed any system updates or programs within the past month or so and it has been problem free for a couple years now, however it did install a "critical system update" two days ago on its own which I could system restore off of, but even when it did succeed it fixed nothing and trying to do it again just gave a bunch of error messages. Running a repair disc also said it found no errors and when I try to run sfc /scannow from it it tells me it's in the middle of a repair so it can't do it.
I have run a virus scan via Malware Bytes which did succeed, and it said it found nothing after an hour of its threat scan. Kernel32.dll is still kernel32.dll in System32, it's not Kernel32.exe like some things I found mentioning it on Google so I'm at a complete loss here, does anyone have any ideas? I'm trying to avoid a clean install as that would mean purchasing another hard drive to backup everything to.
One other thing I found mentioned installing a C++ redistributable from Microsoft's site and while it could load up, it eventually just told me there was a fatal error and it can't even install. I keep noticing that when people bring up this issue there's also a specific name between "entry" and "could" but I don't have any sort of code, it looks like two spaces were put there instead of any sort of name.