Crazy XP issues

[kmillerusaf]

I ran into some mess today at work. My boss's computer had all sort of problems. Mind you, I am a IT Information Resource Consultant so he expects me to know this stuff. Of course I didn't but I did eventually track down how to fix most of it. I'll list the issues below. My question is, does anyone know what would cause these issues to happen? The OS is XP SP2 on a Dell Latitude D830.

1. Safely remove hardware icon is gone (not hidden)
2. Device manager is blank
3. Network connections is blank (no local connection but internet worked just fine)
4. Cannot print to locally installed printer, but can print to network printer.

I was able to get the safely remove hardware icon back by changing the policy to "optimize for performance". I was able to get the device manager back by going to the registry HKEY_local_machine>>System>>CurrentcontrolSet>>Enum and giving users full control. Network connections was a bit different. I had to type a series of commands in the cmd prompt like regsvr32 netman.dll, netcfgx.dll and another that I forget at the moment. The printer eventually printed after deleting and reinstalling it and changing the port manually from lpt1 to usb001. The funny part is that it worked automatically on another laptop and the usb port when I first started working on his computer originally was not there. Then magically, it appeared again! Crazy stuff...

[shadowpr]

Weird problems.

Did you scan for viruses and malware?

[kmillerusaf]

I didn't even though I suspected it. He had a lot of thirty party apps including Ad-aware so I was hoping he was smart enough to not get a virus. But it did feel mighty suspect with those things happening the way they did. His computer was still not 100% when I left it but he's extremely busy so I got what needed to be done, done and went on my way. Virus/spyware/malware scans would have taken forever on that computer

[kmillerusaf]

Anyone else want to give some input?

[bucksfanjimj1]

Try cCleaner to help clean up registry issues.