Windows help: unable to display find tab (177)



I'm stumped. My Windows XP Pro (SP2) laptop will no longer open the
"Find" tab of Windows help, for any help file (HLP extension) on my
system, for any user logged in. It goes through the motion of creating
the word list, then displays "Unable to display the Find tab (177)",
then kicks me back to the Contents or Index tab. The index file that is
supposed to be created by this process (FTS extension) never is. I've
tried using "Minimize database size", "Maximize search capabilities",
and "Customize search capabilities", all with the same end result.

Does anyone have any idea what could cause this? Some security setting
locked down too tight? Busted patch? I've spent an hour Googling to no
avail.

As far as I can tell, I have the correct versions of Windows Help in
C:\WINDOWS:

winhelp.exe 256,192 8/04/2004 7:00:00 v3.10.0.425
winhlp32.exe 283.648 8/04/2004 7:00:00 v5.1.2600.2180

And the stub in C:\WINDOWS\system32:

winhlp32.exe 8,192 8/04/2004 7:00:00 v5.1.2600.0

How the devil do I fix this? Not being able to search help files is a
serious handicap.

--
Ian Merrithew - ADM Systems Engineering
ian.merrithew "at" ieee.org
.



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