cant start firefox or internet explorer on my vista windows laptop-"cant loadxpcom"
Tried system restore,no luck. I downloaded a file to download utube music to media player. Ran spybot ,found 2 bad files, tried to get rid of and must of delated something not suppose to.
All Replies (3)
This issue is usually caused by an incomplete update that didn't replace all files in the Firefox program folder. Possible causes are security software that protects or locks files in the Firefox program folder. In such cases it is best to remove (delete) the Firefox program folder and do a clean reinstall.
Do a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before (re)installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release.
- Download the full Firefox installer and save the file to the desktop
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
If possible uninstall your current Firefox version to cleanup the Windows registry and settings in security software.
- Do NOT remove "personal data" when you uninstall your current Firefox version, because this will remove all profile folders and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords including data in profiles created by other Firefox versions.
Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.
- (32 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
- (64 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"
- It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_Firefox
Your bookmarks and other personal data are stored in the Firefox profile folder and won't be affected by an uninstall and (re)install, but make sure NOT to remove personal data when you uninstall Firefox as that will remove all Firefox profile folders and you lose your personal data.
You also said you can't use Win IE?
Perform a System File Check to fix corrupted system files http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html
http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/ Microsoft Fix it Solution Center: troubleshooting software issues
Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test.
Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - AdwCleaner:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml - SuperAntispyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/ - Microsoft Safety Scanner:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Windows Defender:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender - Spybot Search & Destroy:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Kasperky Free Security Scan:
http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
- Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446
See also: