grandms,

See if you can do a restore in safe mode, I do not see any issues doing a search with sp3 and System restore.

Also for the sound issue try the sound trouble shooter in xp.

Google it "sound trouble shooter in xp"

How to troubleshoot sounds in xp,

See the link

Here is a link that might be useful: Sound troubleshooter

More System restore Information from Microsoft.

Here is a link that might be useful: System Restore information

Thanks, Zep, for those suggestions. I will try this tomorrow when I am less tired and have some time.

Did the system restore back to Nov. 27 in safe mode. Now the Zone Alarm icon is not in the taskbar any longer. I checked the start menu and also Control Panel and it is shown both places.

I thought I'd uninstall it and install the new version that recently came out and it will not allow that. Some dll is not loading properly. I'm at my desktop comp now, so when I'm using the laptop tomorrow, I'll copy the error message and post back. No progress on the sound problem.

I know your your pretty good with the computer, I recommend the sound trouble shooter because it covers all the basics like volume control, master volume ect...

Have you made sure audio service is running to check Start-Run in the run box type Msconfig, click services look for windows audio, even if there is a check mark there go ahead and uncheck it recheck it and reboot,

Then as pam said in other post may be time to check driver, have you looked in device manger yet for Sound Video and game controllers, right click the Audio Device -- buy the way let us know the name of it as in ac97, realtek or something like that---right click the Audio Device choose uninstall reboot the computer windows will find new hardware and attempt to reinstall the driver.

On System Restore is that working in regular mode now

Sorry I did not know you were getting other help on the audio problem today..

Zep, thanks so much for your help. I did try System Restore again in regular mode and it is still not working that way.

I guess this is the problem with two posts, but since I thought I had two separate problems, and I still believe I do, I thought it better to devote one thread to the restore problem and another to the sound problem. I'm checking both of them, so eventually I think I'll have a solution.

That's ok I'll cont. looking for ideas on system restore...

What active programs do you use for Anti Virus, spyware, and firewall, perhaps one of these programs could cause a problem, spybot if teatimer is running, adaware is another one that could cause an issue....

Good luck and I'll look around for other ideas....

I use Avast as my anti-virus, Spywareblaster, Comodo BO Clean, Superantispyware, CCleaner for cleaning, and Zone Alarm as my software firewall. The laptop is networked via a Netgear router, so that should also have a firewall, right?

As I mentioned in a post above, my Zone Alarm doesn't seem to be working. I tried uninstalling the current version, since the restore went back before that was installed, but got a message that I must have administrator rights to do that. I checked, and I do have administrator rights. There is only myself who uses this machine.

The reason you did the restore was for the Audio problem and since it did not resolve it I would have gone back by undoing the restore point and returning the computer to its former state that would have taken care of Zone Alarm.

If System restore does not resolve an issue I always go back and undo the restore point..

And this still leaves us with an audio problem and System Restore not working in regular mode correct...

Hi,grandms, and Zep.

Paddy. AKA >>> numbnuts ..

To properly uninstall ZoneAlarm:

To correctly uninstall ZoneAlarm, use the Add and Remove Programs control panel. Also, for Windows NT, 2000, and XP, you must first disable the True Vector Service (Steps 1 and 2, below).

1. Click Start, then Run.
2. Type net stop > "TrueVector Internet Monitor" 3. Click Start >Control Panel (Windows XP), or Start >Settings >Control Panel (all other versions of Windows).
4. Click Add or Remove Programs.
5. Click on the entry for ZoneAlarm.
6. Click Change/Remove to uninstall the program.
7. Restart your system..

Check out this thread..

http://www.landzdown.com/index.php?topic=5587.0

Yes, Zep, you are right. And I have also noticed that my Quick Play buttons at the top of the keyboard are not working. They are lit up blue, but no response to pressure. Actually, they are a PITA because I was always hitting one accidentally.

Paddy, I am going to try the uninstall that you gave from the other forum.

Tried again to remove Zone Alarm after disabling True Vector Service. Still got an error message:

"You do not have access to make the required system configuration modifications. Please rerun this installation from an administrators account".

I have only one active account and that is administrator. Guest account is disabled, and no others were ever activated.

After clicking Okay at the bottom of the Error box, this message appeared:
"Could not load this DLL library C:\DOCUME~\Bobbie\LOCALS\TEMP\vsutil.dll (WSERmdir). The specified procedure could not be found."

Now I'm really at a loss.

Could not load this DLL library C:\DOCUME~\Bobbie\LOCALS\TEMP\vsutil.dll (WSERmdir).

The above is a zone alarm file to me it looks like zone alarm may have to be reinstalled to uninstall it not sure I am going to zone alarm site now and see what I can find...

"You do not have access to make the required system configuration modifications"

Looking into the above as well....

Thinking -- I wonder if uninstalling in safe mode would help.

Additional information
See if the link is helpful just in case..

Here is a link that might be useful: zone alarm

I'm now thinking that your issues originate with the Zone Alarm update on Dec 6. I found a recommended tool to completely remove Zone Alarm, from Greenwood's. It's supposed to ferret out all those registry keys and leftover dll files that are causing errors. Look on the right side of the page for ZFix.

Pam

Here is a link that might be useful: ZFix for Zone Alarm

Can I urge some caution here! If you are going to do a manual search for this file.

vsutil.dll (please right-click, Properties -> Version to be sure it is a ZA file.
Do NOT delete this file unless it is a Zone Labs file!)

If you find that it is a ZA file and youÂre sure that it is! and it wonÂt delete, you could try
Booting in to safe mode and delete it

Paddy...

Finally got to the computer after a long, busy day. Pouring rain didn't help, but thank God for the rain.
Anyway, I believe I'll try the uninstall in Safe Mode, and I'll be very careful to make sure the vsutil.dll is actually a ZA file before removing it. Since I don't have the Zone Alarm icon in my taskbar, I'll go directly to Start>Programs>Zone Labs and start from there (in Safe Mode of course). I probably won't get to this until some time Saturday, but I'll post back with the results. And thanks to all who have offered help.

By the way, with the help of Owbist, I think we know what my sound problem is. Not sure I can fix it, but it CAN be fixed. Look at the "Lost My Sound" thread for details.

Finally got ZA uninstalled in Safe Mode. Started searching all the left behind files and found it to be quite tedious. So I used Pam's suggestion and downloaded ZFix and ran it. Then I re-downloaded ZA setup from File Hippo, since I didn't trust the setup file I already had. Installed, and all seems well. Oh, yes, deleted the other setup files I had.

Now as for System Restore, I'm just not going to worry about that. I rarely need to do that, and when I do, I'll just do it in Safe Mode.

Thanks everyone for your help on this problem.