[Ajax_1]

My laptop had a working XP SP2 installation. I installed most of Microsoft upgrades. Now on startup everything is fine. When I open Internet Explorer to blank I get no problem but when on the web I get "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has necountered a problem and needs to close". Some time after that the task bar changes from blue to a light brown (and the start menu too) and I loose the ability to play sounds. Media player says there is a problem with the device - or may not be installed. However Device manager says it is there and working properly. If I reboot the machine everyting is working correctly again.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Go The Power]

Hello and welcome to TSF

Try this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;821690

 

[Ajax_1]

Thanks for starting the help process. I had looked at that KB number when searching Microsoft. I did not feel it appropriate as I do not get the svchost error at start up. In fact other similar problem links also seemed inappropriate. That is why I put the title to this the other symptoms that follow that error.

I can have IE up on the screen pointing to blank for a long time without problems. I can move it around the screen causing it to use 50% of the cpu and it does not cause problems. It is only when I go out to the web (as straight forward as google) that something happens.

While first going to the web I have looked at task manager to see if I can find anything to help. While things are running smoothly there are five incaarnations of svchost. Four have about 4 or 5 Meg of memory in use and one has 19 Meg. When I first try a web address the one with 19 goes up to about 25. I then get the error. When I click on the "do not send" button it is this one that disappears and a new incarnation arrives using about 4 Meg.

I am then able to get on with web browsing - or any other work. The only problems are the strange colours of the windows user interface and the fact that the sound system is not working.

 

[Go The Power]

This is strange, please try this:

System File checker: sfc/ scanow

**Note: You will need A Windows XP CD for this exercise**

• Please insert the Windows XP CD into your CD/DVD drive.
• Click Start, then Run
• Copy and paste the command below into the text box (with out the quotation marks)
  " sfc /scannow "
• Click Ok
  
• During the scan you may be asked to Insert the A Windows XP CD, if this happens just click retry and let it do its thing.

Please post back with the results.

 

[Ajax_1]

Thanks.

I have now tried the sfc scan. The first two times I missed the end, so on the third attempt I sat glued to the screen. It simply ended. There was no final message or anything to tell me what it had done. I wondered if there was some log of what it had found so I looked around. I could not find anything.

However when I looked in my user temp directory I did find some wmplogXX.sqm files that could correspond to each time the windows media player had had a problem. These seem to be some binary format so I cannot tell if they help - but I have zipped the last one and attached it as a *.zip file since sqm is not a valid file type. Hope this might be of some help.