SOLUTION: why help and support, avast antivirus, and disk ..

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.customize,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Posting for people searching for the same solution:

It was a dll from iconpackager 3.00 that caused all the chaos...

here is the email I send to avast support after I pinpointed the problem:

- - - - - - - - - - -


I finally pinpointed the solution and am notifying you so that you may help
others with the same problem

using a program called extended task manager, I unloaded various dll's one
by one and found
that the dll that was causing avast to not start was the "iprepair.dll"
version 3.0 that is part of
stardocks iconpackager version 3.00 application. (this is a new version)

Along with avast, it would disable MS help and support and DIsk managment.

After finding the dll that caused the problem I searched on google to see if
others had the same problem
and indeed the problem was a general one!

here are some links:

http://forums.stardock.com/?ForumID=166&AID=81358
http://forums.stardock.com/?ForumID=245&AID=80436

as I can see stardock has released an updated version of iconpackager
(3.00b.093) that solves this issue.

However I am sure many users will have the same problem with avast because
iconpackager is
a very popular software.
So I would suggetst you notify the AVAST support about this issue and tell
people to update their
iconpackager software so that their computers will work ok.

-Kenny