Re: A DLL gone bad ?

On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 19:42:28 GMT, "Pop`" <nodoby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Just a short note to add to Ralph's excellent advice. About Registry
"Cleaners":
Please be careful of unknown sources for them, and be aware that some are
actually no more than spyware/malware packages under the guise of a
"cleaner". Some other "freebies" may claim to find problems, but then
require a purchase to "fix" the problems. Avoid those like the plague
because they're almost always spyware too!

CCleaner, with the unappetizing name of "Crap Cleaner" is one of the better
ones available, is free, and will allow you to "roll back" its fixes if it
should break something.

Here's a realiable, clean site to download it from:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191

No advertising or spyware comes with it from them; majorgeeks is very
reliable and stable. CCleaner is the only one I recommend anymore, not
because it's the only good one, but it's the only good one I'm sure of;
others' mileage may vary of course. There are some very good ones too, but
the sites that will offer them to you might also send you spyware/malware
inside the envelope, which AV won't detect, so stick with sources you know
or have at least checked on. A Google search is going to turn up a LOT of
hits<g>!

If you've not used reg cleaners before, do NOT be surprised if it finds a
LOT of "problems"; that will be normal. Most registries are full of
uninstalled program chaff, file refs that have been deleted, and some other
sometimes scary at first finds, unless you've manually kept it cleaned up.

Before you allow it to delete or modify anything in the Registry itself, at
least glance at what it's about to do and see if it's something you know you
need but just isn't running right now, as in some services.
And, if it's cleaned a LOT of items for you, rerun it again; it'll most
likely find more because some will expose others. Test your machine in
between scans, but if you're determined to streamline, keep running it until
you've either fixed them all or deemed them OK not to fix.
As always, do a quick check to be sure your backups are up to date and
current before you let something new mess with your system or at least set a
Restore Point (XP) or save the System State.
Though I doubt CCleaner will cause any problems, there are certain
situations that any of them can hiccup on and crash your machine, just like
chkdsk can do if it comes across the right set of disk errors.

Personally the only other ones I'd recommend are the pay-fors as in Norton
and a few others with a known reputation.

I am NOT trying to drive you away from a cleaner; just trying to make it
"real world" for you. Most of the problems found on initial scans are not
causing any problems nor wasting any noticeable machine cycles, but it is
good to know things are in order so if you think you need a cleaner, you
almost have to clean those out too. I use Norton on my XP machine and
CCleaner on the Dell dual Xeon.

If you're experiencing registry problems, have you tried booting with a
"Last Known Good Configuration"? Or rolling back to a previous System
Restore Point?

Oh: There is also a faction that hates/despises any sort of registry
cleaner and they'll do all they can to drive you away from them; they're
very close minded in general. So if one of them comes along, I'd suggest a
little research; do not take their word for it. I can give you the ms
groups where a lot of them reside if you'd like to debate the issue, but I'd
definitely not recommend doing so here; the debates can go on for eons.

I have a spiel for malware that AV doesn't detect too, but that doesn't seem
to be your concern right now so I'll take my long winded advice and sneak
away now ... <g>

HTH

Pop`


Robert - This problem is not being caused by a recent installion of
version 2.8. VB, in its current configuration, has been working on the
unit for a couple of years. And, the programs that are acting up have
not been changed recently at all.


Pop - Thanks for the comments.

I downloaded a registry cleaner named "Easy Cleaner" (from ToniArts)
that I had read about elsewhere. I installed it and made a "find
stuff" run but didn't allow it to do anything yet. It found a whole
list of "problems". Since I've had no other issues with this computer,
I'm leary about going any further with this right now - especially
after reading your comments. I'd like to keep this limited to ONE
problem right now rather than have to deal with a whole bunch of
problems.

Something I'd like some clarification on: assuming that the problem
here is that something got screwed up in the registry (since it can't
find the ADODB provider which apparently IS there), wouldn't it be a
prudent thing to do to simply re-register the ADODB provider? Are
there some instructions somewhere as to how I might go about doing
that?

Or, can I un-install it some way and then re-install it?

Any additional comments will be appreciated.

.

Relevant Pages

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