Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and error

Weird error box while working in docs folder

moonbird — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:56:22 -0800

Here's a weird error that I only get when I'm in My Documents or Windows Explorer (so it seems)... I'm stumped. Is it my processor getting screwey? It keeps popping up once I start working in the folder, but nowhere elso on my system. (I did google this and only came up with one site in Russion and one in Spanish). And I am reminded of the IT Crowd: "Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again." Didn't solve it.

Thanks in advance as always.

How can I transfer pictures to my computer without it crashing in the process?

punishinglemur — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 08:46:11 -0800

I'm trying to transfer pictures from my digital camera to my computer, which is being made very difficult by the constant bluescreens Windows is giving me. In the past I've had no problems copying pictures from my xD picture card to my computer by using the card reader that's in my computer. But I just tried copying over a bunch of pictures and after one was copied, Windows threw up a bluescreen error that said something like "An error has been detected in your system," followed by much more that I was unable to read because the system immediately restarted. I tried again, and after two more pictures were transferred the same thing happened. I tried one more time, and while there appeared to be no problem re-copying the three pictures that had made it over to the computer, as soon as it tried to copy another picture I got the bluescreen again. What's going on and how can I fix it?

(Side question: If I were to use tech support on this, who would I go to? The camera manufacturer? The computer manufacturer? Microsoft?)

XP Processes

punishinglemur — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:06:58 -0800

Windows XP SP2 says: "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process." How can I find out what "another process" is?

My userinit.exe is gone and I can't log in to WinXP or access my hard drives.

tumult — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 13:26:27 -0800

SoftwareRAID0AndCan'tLogInToWindowsXPFilter: My userinit.exe is gone after a routine Windows update, and I can't use the recovery console or a boot disk to access my hard drives [+] When I try to log in, I'm immediately kicked back to the login screen after Windows fails to run userinit.exe. No error message is given, but I know this is the problem (the file was deleted during an update and it wasn't recreated when I inserted my SP2 CD in accordance with Windows' instructions). Everything else is fine. I can't use the recovery console on my Windows XP CD because my hard drives are unrecognizable garbage if I don't boot off of my hard disk with the software RAID 0 drivers. I tried booting into safe mode with command prompt. However, Windows tries to log in before it gives you the command prompt, so I'm kicked back to the login window before it before it shows prompt to me. Everything is fully functional, except I can't log in. I need a way to move userinit.exe from either my SP2 CD or my SP2 directory on my hard disk to my Windows directory.

Any suggestions? Running Windows XP Pro SP2, Intel 875PBZ motherboard with Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition (via two SATA hard drives). Also, when I first installed Windows XP, I used a floppy with the Intel software RAID drivers on it by pressing F6 during the pre-install sequence. Is there a way to get the recovery console to use these drivers? Or is it already able to do this and I just don't know it? I thought of that a few minutes ago, but I can't test it at the moment.