Computer Registry apparently corrupted.

[Pokeman186]

Well, we figured that my mother's computer wouldn't get passed the windows startup screen because of a corrupt registry. She used the XP Repair disc enough times that she finally got passed the startup screen. Now, there's still a bunch of problems. The main one is that we can't connect to windows update. We can see a connection and seemed to be connected (she has a wireless card in the computer) but when we click for internet explorer, we get a message that says "The procedure entry point SHRegGetValueW could not be located in the dynamic link library SHLWAPI.dll." And when we click the windows update, the computer thinks for a second, then just doesn't do anything. When she tries to access outlook, she gets the same procedure error message. What can we do?

[kev7555]

I am assuming from your post that you have already tried using the repair console to repair the registry or have done a full repair install without success.

If you have, then you might want to try removing the drive and slaving it to another computer to retrieve data, then format the drive and reinstall a fresh copy of XP.

[ITlover]

There are registry cleaning softwares that you can use to clean the registry of your computer.
Just insert this harddrive in another computer and use the registry cleaner from that computer to clean the registry of this hard drive.

If that doesnot work then format your entire partition and install WinXP all over again.