Internet Explorer !@^$&*?*^!!

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 8:47 am

Within the last 24 hours, I've developed an annoying problem in IE 5.5. It has two symptoms:

When I try running Find (CTRL+F) within IE, I get an IE dialog box stating "Error: 34 Incompatible versioon of the RPC stub." The other problem is that when I click on a hotlink, the new window spawns but doesn't receive information about the net address, so it hangs indefinitely until closed (or I enter an address by hand).

I'm not quite sure how this happened. There has been only one major uninstallation I've done, lately--removing M&M IX, which (because it was a review copy) required a downloaded password patch to run. It's possible that left some footprint in the registry, but I can't find it.

I did go back to a previous iteration of IE--4.0, using the IE Repair Tool. That actually worked fine, but when I reinstalled IE 5.5, the problems were back (and now I can't return to 4.0 and try again). Anyone encounter this before, and have any idea what to do? I'm running Windows 98, with 256 MB RAM.

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 1:55 pm

Hi Fable,

You've had a program overwrite OLEAUT32.DLL in your windows system directory. Restoring this file from the windows CD should fix the problem, but you will have to do this from a safe-mode DOS prompt.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 2:21 pm

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
Hi Fable,

You've had a program overwrite OLEAUT32.DLL in your windows system directory. Restoring this file from the windows CD should fix the problem, but you will have to do this from a safe-mode DOS prompt.

Nope. The file is still in my windows/system directory. I just checked.

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 2:32 pm

What version of that .dll file have you got? It should be 2.20.4122.1

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 4:39 pm

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
What version of that .dll file have you got? It should be 2.20.4122.1

It shows as 3.50.5014.0.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 4:40 pm

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
What version of that .dll file have you got? It should be 2.20.4122.1

It shows as 3.50.5014.0. The date on it is 8/23/01.

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 5:13 pm

Originally posted by fable

It shows as 3.50.5014.0. The date on it is 8/23/01.

That version of the .dll comes with MS Office 2000 and a few others. It's actually incompatible with several programs in Win98 and Win98se. Make a backup of this file (I'm a bit paranoid about removing dll files, so I always advise backing them up first) and then replace it with the original from your windows CD. For windows 98 it in Win98_36.cab and Win98_39.cab for 98se. Oleaut32.dll is used by windows at all times, so the file will be locked. If you extract the original copy from the cab file to somewhere else on your hard disk you can copy it to the windows\system directory from DOS mode. It will ask you if you want to overwrite the file, just select yes.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 6:10 pm

Originally posted by Mr Flibble

That version of the .dll comes with MS Office 2000 and a few others. It's actually incompatible with several programs in Win98 and Win98se. Make a backup of this file (I'm a bit paranoid about removing dll files, so I always advise backing them up first) and then replace it with the original from your windows CD. For windows 98 it in Win98_36.cab and Win98_39.cab for 98se. Oleaut32.dll is used by windows at all times, so the file will be locked. If you extract the original copy from the cab file to somewhere else on your hard disk you can copy it to the windows\system directory from DOS mode. It will ask you if you want to overwrite the file, just select yes.

I doubt that's the reason. For one thing, I've had MOffice installed for a couple of years without a problem. For another, I did use the Repair IE tool yesterday and reloaded IE 4, which worked perfectly. When I reinstalled 5.5, the bugs were back. Note that IE 5.5 worked fine before yesterday, and there was no incompatibility problem with the dynamic link library file you mentioned at that time.

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 6:46 pm

Try it out. This solution is direct from Microsoft Technet, and I've also seen the same problem discussed on several other tech support forums.

I have encountered this problem a couple of times on some of my customers systems (I'm a tech support engineer), and this has fixed the problem and taken care of a few other as well.

And if it doesn't work that's what the backup is for.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 7:36 pm

I'm certainly willing to give it a shot--what have I got to lose? But I doubt I still have that old Windows 98 disk. It must I'll check, though. Do you know of a website where the dll is available in that version?

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 7:47 pm

I can send you a copy of the file if you want. It's 307kb zipped, so I'll have to do it by email.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 8:23 pm

That would be great, if you could. I've sent you an email.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 9:08 pm

@Flibble, my thanks. Your fix actually worked, even though it seemed completely unrelated to the problem at hand.

Let me throw a minor difficulty your way, and see if you have any quick words of wisdom to offer. Simply put, I frequently get a SPOOL32 error sometime (usually shortly after rebooting, but not always), and that program closes. It doesn't appear to affect anything else. I've tried removing as many TSRs as possible, but that doesn't seem to do anything. If you want to take a shot at that; if not, I'll understand. At least I'm back up and running without those two hassles: once again, thanks!

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 9:25 pm

Originally posted by fable
@Flibble, my thanks. Your fix actually worked, even though it seemed completely unrelated to the problem at hand.

Let me throw a minor difficulty your way, and see if you have any quick words of wisdom to offer. Simply put, I frequently get a SPOOL32 error sometime (usually shortly after rebooting, but not always), and that program closes. It doesn't appear to affect anything else. I've tried removing as many TSRs as possible, but that doesn't seem to do anything. If you want to take a shot at that; if not, I'll understand. At least I'm back up and running without those two hassles: once again, thanks!

@fable, glad to hear it worked.

Spool32 is the applet in windows that proccesses print jobs, and in my opinion is the most common windows headache there is.

I'm assuming because you're getting this error you have a printer attached to your computer. In many cases this can be solved by reloading the printer driver or upgrading to a newer version of it. If I can remember how it's done I'll post the procedure on replacing the print spooler. I'm using XP, so I can't play with it here. Don't be surprised if you can't fix this one: spool32 links directly into kernel32.vxd, which is the core of the operating system.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:15 pm

Just so another Mr on the board doesn't eclipse myself i will throw my two penny's worth in....oh wait i think i might have short changed things a little

Do you have some form of active scanner with your printer driver that loads at startup, what printer do you have, i recall that Epson one's have a particular habit of installing a Printer Manager, these can quite often cause an inordinate amount of problems and they always start with windows, try disabling and/or removing it and see how that goes

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:26 pm

No, no scanner that loads a driver upon boot-up, @Sleep.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:32 pm

Originally posted by fable
No, no scanner that loads a driver upon boot-up, @Sleep.

Damn, my one chance

What have you got loading at start up, anything that might conflict?

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:59 pm

Originally posted by Mr Sleep

Damn, my one chance

What have you got loading at start up, anything that might conflict?

I've already tried removing everything I could to see if that corrected the problem. It made literally no difference.

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 6:03 pm

What make and model of printer do you have?

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 6:17 pm

We'd previously installed a Brother MFC 7150C. That hasn't been uninstalled, yet. The problem has been endemic while that's been around. Just recently, we moved that printer out, and installed a cheapie HP officejet.

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Internet Explorer !@^$&?^!!

Internet Explorer !@^$&?^!!