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?

Thursday, March 20, 2008 by BigDogBigFeet | Discussion: 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.

157 Reply 95 Referrals
First Previous Page 8 of 8 Next Last
vStyler
Reply #141 Monday, March 24, 2008 6:56 AM
one of mine is.. There's no excuse for ignorance.. I didn't even know it was a beta.

ShelbyGT_The_Car
Reply #142 Monday, March 24, 2008 7:49 AM
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  

HG_Eliminator
Reply #143 Monday, March 24, 2008 8:30 AM
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.

kona0197
Reply #144 Monday, March 24, 2008 3:43 PM
Yrag - good thing you don't do Linux troubleshooting. You probably would pull your hair out!

ShelbyGT_The_Car
Reply #145 Monday, March 24, 2008 7:23 PM
Thank you Kris Wilas for helping me out!
Now I can persue my work again this evening as planned.

SGT  

Daiwa
Reply #146 Thursday, March 27, 2008 11:11 PM
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.

BigDogBigFeet
Reply #147 Thursday, March 27, 2008 11:27 PM
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.

Daiwa
Reply #148 Thursday, March 27, 2008 11:33 PM
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.

PoSmedley
Reply #149 Friday, March 28, 2008 7:32 AM
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.

BigDogBigFeet
Reply #150 Friday, March 28, 2008 7:45 AM
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 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.

BigDogBigFeet
Reply #151 Wednesday, April 2, 2008 12:11 AM
Update:

I have now installed through Impulse IP 3.99c.058(beta) which is the beta of IP4 and I'm loving it. It right now seems to have fixed all the issues. Msconfig and Mspaint run and I no longer am noticing any memory leak issues. Way to go Stardock!  

Oh, and Apogee theme (in IP4) now allows for directly applying all color scheme subsets directly(this was an issue reported in another thread.

So anyone who says Object Desktop Ultimate isn't here yet or that Stardock doesn't respond to Beta bug reports your just not paying attention.

Doing the happy dance now.          

zakai1369
Reply #152 Wednesday, April 2, 2008 1:29 AM
Never read this thread myself until now.

Kind of surprised though that the devs never caught this and posted their responses from HERE to this thread also.


BigDogBigFeet
Reply #153 Wednesday, April 2, 2008 6:38 AM
Kind of surprised though that the devs never caught this and posted their responses from HERE to this thread also.


The devs were aware of this thread and the issues that were discussed here.

JeffBDVS
Reply #154 Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:00 AM
Here is a link to what is going on with this issue. I hope you find the info useful.

-Jeff

WWW Link

JeffBDVS
Reply #155 Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:02 AM
EDIT: Sorry, the info is in reply #46 in the linked thread.

-Jeff

Daiwa
Reply #156 Friday, May 23, 2008 12:56 AM
msconfig.exe's UI was restored for me by changing the shell icon setting in IP3 & limiting repair of shell icons to specific processes/apps (props & thanks to JeffBDVS).

However, I continue to have the same problem with IE6 on one of my rigs even after making those changes in IP3 - every other launch or so, the iexplore.exe process will appear in TM but no UI appears. After a day's worth of use by my wife &/or son (it's her home rig), there may be 6 or 8 instances of iexplore.exe running in TM & no UI up. On shutdown or restart, have to kill all those instances of iexplore.exe one at a time (each 'not responding').

I may try restoring the Windows default icons & uninstalling IP to see if this behavior is related simply to the app's presence. This is a very frustrating issue.

hselburn
Reply #157 Monday, December 8, 2008 8:29 PM

Well this is now happening to me. I used CCleaner to clear out my temp and prefetch, uninstalled Impulse and WindowBlinds and as of now I still can't get msconfig.exe to boot. Should I try uninstalling Theme Manager? What other Stardock apps should I uninstall and reinstall? (I want to reinstall any I uninstall with the latest stable version but first things first, let's get msconfig.exe to reappear. It does load in task manager, I just can't see the thing on my desktop.! It's invisi-msconfig.exe!

 

Thanks!

hselburn


Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

  • Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
  • Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
  • Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
  • It's simple, and FREE!
Login
First Previous Page 8 of 8 Next Last

Home | About | Privacy | Upload Guidelines | Terms of Service | Help
Copyright © Stardock Corporation. All Rights Reserved.


web-wc01