I have a friend's laptop that I am trying to solve some problems on, and it's running
Windows XP Home.
I have done alot of scans and such, and had it running much better, but decided to
download Spybot. I ran this program, (which I'm used to on my own desktop) and from
then on, I had trouble. I can't remember what I got rid of, but it gave me an error
message that I hadn't seen before.
I then downloaded a program Registry Easy and thought that would take care of the
problem. I've researched on the web so much about all the errors, and then this program
I think created MORE problems.
All of a sudden, it disappeared out of the laptop, and I now can't access things
like defrag andsome programs.
A window comes up saying it's going to install whatever, and then an error window
stating that the installer cannot be accessed..due to either working in safe mode
(NOT) or that it had been installed incorrectly.
I researched and tried many in depth methods to correct this problem, and I'm still
nowhere.
Can anyone help me with this?
Thanks
Jovin

Do a System Restore to before you ran Spybot, see if that fixes the problem.

no, I'd done that and it hasn't helped.

Do you have a Windows install CD? If so you could try running System File Checker. That will replace any missing or corrupted system files.

Start / Run / type sfc /scannow and press Enter

It will ask for the XP CD if it finds a file that needs to be replaced that is not in the dllcache directory. When done it just ends, no report of what it did or did not find.

If you don't have one, is there a hidden recovery partition on the hard drive? If so you could restore the computer to it's factory installed state, but that would lose everything on the drive so you would have to back it up first. If no hidden recovery partition, did it come with a recovery CD?

Sorry, just seeing this now.
It's not my computer, but I don't think I could use MY Windows disk. I'm going to go and do a couple of more things suggested to me, and then will come back and read this again for more help.
Thank you so much for your reply.
Jovin

What is the make and model of the laptop? That would help to see what options are available.