stdole32.tlb To You Too, You Piece Of Crap

I needed to process some data for my business partner, so after mangling the source files appropriately with a little Python script I wrote for the purpose, I fired up Excel so I could convert the text output from Python into a handy spreadshet.

Quoth Excel, stdole32.tlb.

And reinstalled itself.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained; I rebooted but soon was pained to hear Excel once more proclaim

stdole32.tlb

I searched the web but all in vain; no page I found could well explain the reason that Excel laid blame to

stdole32.tlb

I ran Regedit at this point and discovered that my registry has pretty much lost its marbles, not only did no-one have access to HKEY_ACCESS_ROOT (which would explain certain difficulties I've had installing software), but I couldn't grant access to anyone, because it had lost whatever registry setting allows it to grant access to users.  I could grant access to things that aren't real users, various system default things like SYSTEM.  Which I did.

And then all the shortcuts in the start menu stopped working and turned into .lnk files, which makes using Windows pretty bloody difficult, let me tell you.

For one thing, it comes up with a helpful message telling you to use the Control Panel to fix the problem.  The Control Panel which you now have no way to access.

Then, while I was faffing about again in Regedit trying to fix this new problem, it suddenly fixed itself.

Yes, I'm running a virus and malware check.  But I do that regularly anyway, and AVG scans all downloaded files automatically.  And I've been having strange issues with the registry on and off for a while now.

My Linux box hasn't even been rebooted in the past year, while it looks like my Windows box needs a complete reinstall.

Bah.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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