Amazing as it seems, almost a year after I moved to Mac, Windows XP is still giving me problems.
This time it was via VirtualPC. I wanted to tweak XP’s performance in VirtualPC, which is something like saying “I wanted to pimp out my Pinto for the big car show” but nonetheless… my plan was to follow the “safe” suggestions and turn off all the services listed here. But when I tried, I received a very annoying alert:
Snap-in failed to load clsid 58221c67-ea27-11cf-adcf-00aa00a80033
I tried a new user account and other suggestions to no avail.
Finally I saw a suggestion to try sfc /scannow which triggers a scan of Windows File Protection, but that wanted my XP SP2 CD, and, unlike most people, I don’t travel around with my XP SP2 CD.
Then I found this post on the wonderfully-named Windows-related forum “Annoyances.org” which indicated that someone else had recently solved this problem by replacing and re-registering “filemgmt.dll”
Hrm.
Ok, but how do I get a new copy of filemgmt.dll without my CD?
Aha.
Fortunately for me, I have access to another computer running Windows XP SP2. I logged into it using Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac. I found the file in c:\windows\system32\ and verified that my Services window was working there.
Then I logged into AIM using Trillian (because AOL has gone out of their minds with the ads in their AIM client) and dropped the file in and transferred it to my Mac (where I was logged into a different AIM account using iChat).
From there I dropped the file onto my Windows XP desktop in VirutalPC. I suppose if I were truly adept I would have had AIM installed in VirtualPC, but I tend to only install what I absolutely must have there, and AIM isn’t on the list).
Once I had the file I simply did:
copy filemgmt.dll c:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\ [and confirmed that I wanted to replace the file]
and then
copy filemgmt.dll c:\WINDOWS\system32\ [and confirmed that I wanted to replace that file]
Note that I replaced the dllcache version first, otherwise there is a slight chance that when I replaced the other version, Windows would “fix” it (i.e. take the version from dllcache and replace the other one) before I had the chance.
I right clicked on My Computer and chose “Manage” and voila! The page magically appears.
Some days there are advantages to being a geek. Of course everyone in the house went to bed some time ago, but no matter….