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Question

Live Mail-Sidebar stop working after Advanced system care

Jan 6, 2013 1:32AM PST

Windows Live Mail and Windows Sidebar stopped working after installing Advanced system care Pro and running WINFIX. Son installed over the holidays and thought he was helping - but now Live mail and sidebar have both stopped working. Husband tried to fix it but it went from being able to receive email to not functioning at all now. He did a system restore to 12/16/12 last night. That was prior to ASC Pro 6.0 being installed, only the trial version was installed at that point and the sidebar and live mail were working but now neother of those are working - and potentially other software but haven't tested all items.

System info-
Vista Home Premium SP2
4G ram
64 bit
Intel core duo processor at 2.53 GHz

Any thoughts on how to cure this? Currently the only way to get email is through internet - had three accounts in windows live mail - all were working fine prior to dec 17.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Not really
Jan 6, 2013 1:39AM PST

Not really much you can do, sorry. You're just the latest tale of woe associated with registry cleaner programs. If system restore doesn't undo the damage, then you're looking at reinstalling affected programs, maybe even the OS.

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Answer
System restore didn't work
Jan 6, 2013 1:48AM PST

Apparently husband informed me that system restore didn't work. Advanced System Care Pro 6 is still on the machine but I plan to uninstall it - haven't yet. The error message I get when trying to run windows live mail is a window with this message - all that is available to do is close program.
"A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the prograam and notify you if a solution is available."

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I'd copy whatever data you want to keep & restore to factory
Jan 6, 2013 1:56AM PST

settings. If you can't restore to factory settings, you'll need to reinstall everything from scratch including all your drivers. Look at Device Manager & make a list, then download them from your manufacturer's web site. After reinstalling, you'll need to install all your applications. That includes download Windows Live Essentials from the MS web site and setting up WLM with your accounts. As Jimmy Greystone points out, those registry cleaners are snake oil, do no noticable good, and can create problems.

When you've gotten your system back like you want it, I urge you to get yourself an external hard drive and a good 3rd party backup program. You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. 1 TB external hard drives are about $70 these days and a really good FREE backup program is the Easeus todo backup free which you can download from
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm . That can save you a lot of time and frustration the next time something like this happens. Sooner or later it happens to all computers for one reason or another.

Good luck.

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Have external drive
Jan 6, 2013 10:30PM PST

Just wanted you to know I have a 200 G external drive. Files are backed up - but I do need to get a Vista disk as the PC only came with a partition. Some forums I read indicate that the partition will take the PC to the original out of box status - including the OS and all loaded software - but I haven't gone there so I don't know for sure if that works.

I do know that I don't want to test it and with a Vista disk I can run an in depth repair on OS if needed.

Thanks though for your advice.

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Answer
Registry cleaners are rarely a good idea.
Jan 6, 2013 2:11AM PST

It's been said before so I have only one idea. Try creating a new user in Windows and see if the new user can setup and use those accounts.

And of course, get rid of the cleaner/optimizer.
Bob

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All is fixed
Jan 6, 2013 10:26PM PST

Just wanted to provide an update of what I did to fix this issue.

First off I went into safe mode, uninstalled the registry cleaner Advanced system care Pro 6.0 and proceeded to roll back to the earliest date available, luckily that date was pre the running of Winfix in ASC Pro. It took over an hour to complete. Upon reboot the sidebar was working and the WL Mail icon was back - yeah! It took an additional 20 minutes upon reboot to actually notify that the system restore was successful.

Then I went to Add/Remove programs to see about the nasty registry cleaner - it was still registered as being there and was not available to change or remove - when I tried to uninstall it I received an error message that the file unins000.msg was missing and so it couldn't be uninstalled.

So I went into program files and sure enough all the files were still listed there - even though it was uninstalled in safe mode. I tried ripping it out by the root in program files but it notified me that I didn't have permission to delete the IOBit main folder - very nasty program - gave itself complete control over everything, so I just started deleting subsidiary folders. Was able to remove all but one ASC care event.dll file and the main IOBit folder.

Then I went into the registry - made a copy just in case - and searched for IOBit. I removed all keys associated with that and went back to program files and removed all its permissions. Then I was able to remove the last .dll file but still not able to remove the root folder???? Nonetheless - the thing is gone and I am glad. Son and hubby were told to keep paws off the PC and told son if he wanted to be a guru he should go take some classes. LOL

Ran a complete AVG scan - no issues. Then started WL Mail and it ran an installer and then opened up like normal. All existing mail is there and I can now send email as well as receive - which I couldn't do after son ran the WinFix from ASC pro.

Luckily didn't have to go back to initial OOB status as PC didn't come with a Vista disk, only a partition. Will need to get a Vista disk in case I need to reload the OS in future.

Thanks for all your input.

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That recovery partition should be documented in user guide
Jan 7, 2013 12:04AM PST

Normally there's a user guide on your hard drive that documents the procedure for restoring to factory settings along with how to make recovery discs. That was definitely the case with my HP and Dell desktops and Toshiba laptop. On these the user guide is under Start -> All Programs -> manufacturer name.

Good luck.