Solved linkinfo.dll is either not designed to run on windows...

[HowardWoodard]

My granddaughter has an old homebuilt PC based on the EliteGroup K7S5A motherboard and the AMD 2600+ CPU. With XP becoming obsolete I thought I'd take a shot at installing Windows 7 on it. I took a new 160 GB drive that was formatted for NTFS and installed a Windows 7. Amazingly it installed without a glitch and found drivers for all of the hardware. Heck, I'm sure that it even runs faster. The only issue was no driver specific to the AGP graphics card so it runs a default lowres display.

Occasionally/randomly I will get the following error...

"linkinfo.dll is either not designed to run on windows or it contains an error"

It is at different times, starting or exiting different applications and functions, that I get the error. Its a pretty vanilla installation and the error first showed up right after the initial Win7 installation so there were no other programs installed at the time.

I googled it and found thousands of entries that looked like the exact error message I'm getting that clearly were just trying to sell me various "auto fix" programs.

Does anyone know what causes this error and what I need to do to stop it?

Thanks in advance,

Howard

 

[Mellon Head]

Yeah, stay away from the auto-fix programs. Most of them are bad news.

You could try running an SFC/Scannow on your machine to verify file integrity.

Do the following:

1. Click the Start button.
2. Type "command" in the search box... DO NOT hit ENTER yet!
3. While holding CTRL-Shift on your keyboard, hit ENTER.
4. You will be prompted with a permission dialog box.
5. Click Yes.
6. A black box will open with a blinking cursor.
7. Type "sfc /scannow" and hit ENTER.
8. System File Checker will begin scanning for linkinfo.dll and other system file problems (be patient - the system scan may take a while).
9. Follow the on-screen commands.

You may have to run the utility three times, but if it gives you a clean bill of health, post back and tell us.

Also, what kind of anti-virus are you using on that computer?

 

[HowardWoodard]

Thanks MH. I had run this earlier and it did not fix the problem. You provided the key when you said I might have to run it 3 times. I ran it again and, at least so far, I've not seen the error again. I think I'll run sfc one more time just for good measure.

Thanks for taking the time to help me.

 

[Mellon Head]

That's great. Hopefully it's righted itself. Post back if you see the message again.