Where is System Restore located?

[ibetf]

I have a "slight" problem. Because of a series of issues I had to manually delete an anti virus program called Kaspersky. It would not delete on its own, with Windows Add/Remove or with a 3rd party uninstaller that I have. I also used a 3rd party registry cleaner to get rid of the junk I couldn't easily find. In the process I may have also deleted some necessary Windows files bit I'm not sure. One file in the Kaspersky folder refuses to go away. It is called shellex.dll. I have tried deleting it in the Safe mode and also using a program called Unlock which I found after doing a Google on this dll file that other people have had problems with.

As of now I cannot use Yahoo search although Google search works. I cannot access Windows updates, Hot Mail.com, MS Messenger, and the part of my MS Money program that accesses the internet will not open. Sites that are using Java are also not working. I cannot access Windows Media Player, the Users Accounts in Controls, Search, or Help which is where I normally go to get Windows System Restore.

I really don't want to have to do a complete reinstall of Windows as it takes me days to get everything in place again. Is there another way to get to System Restore or is something going on with the software that is so corrupted that I am out of luck? Does anyone have an idea how to delete that dll file as it may be affecting other things. Incidentely, I tried reinstalling the Kaspersky program just to maybe calm things down but it now stalls during installation with an error message about some temp file in Documents & Settings that I cannot find. I also ran a program to recover deleted files but it came up blank. And I ran a virus check with the program I have installed right now and it came up blank. I'm out of ideas. Thanks for any help.

[macko72]

Windows XP has the ability to protect itself from system instability caused by 3rd party software overwriting important system files. System File Checker (sfc.exe)
You will often see references to scannow sfc in online newsgroups etc. This is a great tool for troubleshooting Windows XP problems.

MoveOnBoot allows you to copy, move or delete files on the next system boot. This can come handy if you need to replace or delete files that are locked by other applications, loaded into memory or cannot be changed until next system boot.

And at the end you may do Repair install witch will repair windows and not loose any important data that you may have but note this: IT WILL DELETE ALL UPDATES INCLUDING SERVICE PACKS!!!

[jayb1234]

Look in the kapersky folder for unwise.exe and double click that, it is the uninstaller and might remove it cleanly, if it is even there.

Most programs use it, but I don't know for sure whether Kapersky does or not.

[ibetf]

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately nothing worked so I ended up doing a complete reinstall of Windows. 9 hours overnight to wipe the hard drive clean and a full day to reinstall all my programs. Fortunately I keep backup copies of all my software downloads and valuable files so it is just a matter of going through the list one by one. I'm getting better at this. The first reinstall took nearly a day longer with all the screwups from some of the programs that I had long since forgotten what I originally did while setting them up. Now I include a short text file with detailed notes on configurations and idiosyncracies.