Where oh where is my msconfig.exe?

Do I still have it and it's been hidden by an installed app or is something else going on?

Published on March 20, 2008 By BigDogBigFeet In Personal Computing

Hi all,

Well as a result of Po's thread Virtual Memory Question I've discovered that when I click on start, run and type in msconfig and press enter ...... nothing happens. I fired up explorer and searched my windows sub, no go and did a system Search twice and again no go. Did some web searching and discovered one of 2 possibilities an installed app has it hidden from my through a system key setting or in the worst case malware. At present I'm not suspecting malware. System has no other problems currently and it's possible any of these progs could have it hidden: Ad-Aware 2007 Free, SpyBot Search and Destroy (I'm new to both of these) I also have Tune-Up Utilities 2006 and please don't gasp, Norton System Works(well mostly, lol).

Anywho, I thought I'd post to see if anyone has some insight as to what's caused this and what Reg Key(s) might be involved. I'm thinking that's probably what's happened.

Comments (Page 10)

136

ZubaZ

on Mar 23, 2008

ZubaZ smiles . .but with little joy.

137

vStyler

on Mar 23, 2008

You didn't have to give up twice my friend

Maybe the Stardockians can work on the forums while their working on this.. get it all working, Forums have been dodgy all weekend.

138

Nimbin

on Mar 23, 2008

i restored IP to the latest stable version, everything is back to normal again, no reformatting needed. I don't blame stardock for this what so ever as i chose to install the 3.90 IP beta and this is sometimes what happens with beta software. I'll just wait now until
the stable release is up and running.

139

vStyler

on Mar 23, 2008

I don't reallly blame em either.. It's good that its been sorted out to some extent tho.

140

ZubaZ

on Mar 23, 2008

One of my favorite quotes:
"Nothing on earth is forcing you to install the beta versions. It can get rough on the bleeding edge.

" -- Kris Kwilas, 'Essays on Mind and Matter'

141

vStyler

on Mar 24, 2008

one of mine is.. There's no excuse for ignorance.. I didn't even know it was a beta.

142

ShelbyGT_The_Car

on Mar 24, 2008

Well no more problems here except I ran out of activations ...

Someone get me reset so I can get my new partition finished for the final SP1 release.

Thank you... heelllp.....!!!!!!!!!

SGT

143

HG_Eliminator

on Mar 24, 2008

IP4 was an alpha. It is the only application I removed after I noticed I couldnt run MSconfig,Ms paint or defragmentor. I still have Impulse ,and WB installed but I never installed the one in impulse. Now that I have removed IP4 alpha everythings fine.

I downloaded it knowing the risks and took a chance, fortunately I lucked out in resolving it.

144

kona0197

on Mar 24, 2008

Yrag - good thing you don't do Linux troubleshooting. You probably would pull your hair out!

145

ShelbyGT_The_Car

on Mar 24, 2008

Thank you Kris Wilas for helping me out!
Now I can persue my work again this evening as planned.

SGT

146

Daiwa

on Mar 27, 2008

I'm wondering if this isn't a bug in the OS. I recall now I had exactly the same problem with MSPaint on a prior Win2k machine. I'd click on Paint's icon multiple times but no UI would appear, and I'd find multiple instances of mspaint.exe running in TaskManager. That was my then-current WB development rig and I abandoned MSPaint as my .bmp editor at the time for that reason. I hunted around on a few of the MS tech forums at the time & found others having a similar problem but I never came across a solution or fix. I realize SD apps were installed, but that was a long time ago, in an OS far far away.

147

BigDogBigFeet

on Mar 27, 2008

So far what I've found is, at least on my machine, the most likely cause was the beta install of IP4. I've been able to reinstall the latest WB beta and Impulse beta without problems but, attempting to re-install IP4 brought the problems back. Including memory leak issues of about 150MB's after a few days. Rolled back to IP 3.2 and no problems.

148

Daiwa

on Mar 27, 2008

Only fly in that ointment is that IP 3.20 is on one of the affected rigs and 3.11 on another; neither have seen any higher versions & neither have seen Impulse.

149

PoSmedley

on Mar 28, 2008

I finally got around to installing SDC. It asked if I wanted to update IP. I did, with the beta. Lost msconfig, defrag, snag-it. It was IconPackager 3.99.[b].047. I immediately uninstalled it and everything went back to normal.

I hope they fix this before it comes out for release. This is the first and only time I have ever had a problem with any SD software or beta's for that matter.

150

BigDogBigFeet

on Mar 28, 2008

I experioenced the exact same thing. I have no system issues running IP3.2 and all my system problems return when trying to run IP4. I sent an email to support last weekend regarding this and I got a response it was being forwarded to the Dev's.

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