Hi all,

I would be most grateful for some help with the following issue:

After deleting what I thought were all unnecessary files, I found that my computer would only start in Safe Mode....although the screen was totally blank (CTRL-ALT-DELETE showed no processes running). I re-booted with a Start-Up Boot Disk, which suggested I run the scanreg utility. This found a problem with my registry, 'fixed it' and allowed me to start up in normal mode.....

....only problem is I am now getting error messages like this (in order of appearance):

i) RUNDLL Error loading powrprof.dll One of the library files needed to this application cannot be found

(appears at the password screen and after loading the desktop)

ii) ERROR STARTING PROGRAM A required .DLL file, WINSPOOL.DRV, was not found

(Also get this message when I try to run certain programs, such as Ad-aware or Firefox; Internet Explorer still loads, but some websites have a problem)

iii) RUNDLL Error loading C:\PROGR~1\[etc....]\METERI~1.DLL

(The [etc] seems to reference my Exceed Hummingbird x-server - I interface with a Unix/Linux machine a lot)

I have tried extracting the WINSPOOL file from the CAB files (number 16 - forget the full name) in C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CAB. This seemed to proceed sucessfully, though I still get the error message telling me it isn't there when I reboot; I have no idea where to look for the powrprof.dll file.

Very grateful for any help!

Thanks,

Paul

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Just run C:\Windows\Options\Install\SETUP will reinstall and replace files. As with 
any reinstall backup important files just in case.




Sgt
Back it up Soldier

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You should be able to run - MSCONFIG and use its Extract button to locate any files in the CAB files. The trick is placing them in the correct folder. The SETUP or reinstall of Windows will do it for you, but also requires that you then REPAIR IE and also download all of the Windows Updates again.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Hey Jack, off topic, but I have 1 Box running WinMe with 768 megs RAM..Just because 
I always have spare memory around. Have system.ini/vcache set accordingly but always 
wonder what chuck size would be optimal 512k good, or does it even matter?... tried 
different settings from various sources. Just from reading posts you know WinMe better 
then any techs I know, so your opinion would be valued.



Sgt
Back it up Soldier

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I played around with the Chunksize setting at one point. Not because I was really interested in optimizing the system, but because of one application I was running that does a huge amount of disk read/writes to a large number of files and was real slow. The short story was that I found it made very little difference.

Only when I forced the disk drive down to using 8K cluster size and set chunksize to match did I see any noticeable improvement at all. But such small cluster sizes caused other problems.

I also found that as I increased memory size, any differences in performance due to changing chunksize became even more negligible. Mainly because actual SwapFile usage decreased.

This prompted me to increase my system memory size. At 640MB of ram the performance problem almost went away, as the whole application and all of its data now could fit into memory and Windows ME's disk cache. I was no longer using the SwapFile.

This then prompted me to write my own version of the application which ran 24 times faster. Right now I have to live with it running slower because the current system board is not reliable with more than 512MB of memory, and the application runs best with over 700MB. (1GB of ram was nice while it lasted until the system board and processor went out day.)

I also found one web page where the chunksize was tested and he found much the same results. See: Chunksize Optimization Guide. Note he was doing this on Windows 98 with only 128MB of ram, and not where the improved SwapFile and disk cache logic of Windows ME makes almost all SwapFile optimization unnecessary.

In theory, if you were trying to run Windows ME on a 64MB or smaller system, setting the chunksize to 4096 bytes to match the page swap size should give you the best performance, but even then I suspect it would still be almost a negligible difference.

So for Windows ME, my answer to almost all SwapFile optimization questions is: Let Windows ME handle it, defrag the swapfile when you can, and add more RAM.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Cheers for the replies Jack and Sgt - I think I'll probably have to go through the re-install.

All this started because I was trying to delete some spyware etc; will Ad-aware and Hi-jack this be able to sort out these problems (or at least guide me to the cause) after I've corrected Windows, or are there better things to do/use?

You should be able to run - MSCONFIG and use its Extract button to locate any
>files in the CAB files. The trick is placing them in the correct folder. The SETUP
>or reinstall of Windows will do it for you, but also requires that you then REPAIR
>IE and also download all of the Windows Updates again.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Having Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D updated with current definition files and an up to date Virus scan will go a long way to cleaning out problems for you. Best to see if you can get your current system running well enough to run these programs before attempting the re-install of Windows ME (C:\Windows\Options\Install\SETUP) as you don't want these programs around causing problem after the re-install.

If you have them installed already, run them in Safe Mode.

There are other programs that help if you have specific problems. See: page for links to the best of the free ones.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Thanks again Jack,

Only problem is that I get the "powrprof.dll missing" error when I try and run Ad-Aware. Do you think I should just go ahead with the re-install and then deal with the spyware etc?

Cheers,

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