Key "Path" Missing?

[Raistlin]

Hi Guys,

Wonder if someone can help with this one please?

Whenever my Brother-n-law starts his PC (Windows XP Home) up he gets a Windows error message box pop up with only an Ok button on it.

Title: Automatic Update Agent
Message: KEY 'Path' is missing in the registry

Now, I'm assuming that this is because something is trying to load at startup, looking for a KEY in the registry that is called "Path" and not being able to find it.

I'm thinking that the best way to work out what is causing it is to do a selective startup and remove one entry from the list at a time until we don't get the error message any more. Would this be the best way to tackle this though?

Before we start messing with his machine, is there anything that we shouldn't stop from loading at startup?

The situation is that his machine is a few years old, he has a lot of software installed that is (for one reason or another) pretty much irreplaceable without significant cost and time. It's taken (many) years to get the software that he needs for his home business to work the way that it needs to and it really isn't possible to start it all from scratch.

If it turns out to be a Windows component, will removing the component and then re-installing it fix the error?

Thanks for any help.
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Forgot to say that if anybody wants to see a picture of the message I can post it here. Didn't seem like a lot of point though as it is exactly as I've described it above.

Also, this happens regardless of which account you log into so I'm guessing it has to be something that is installed in all of the profiles.

[Chris W]

http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

this should help...

it tells you what from msconfig you need/ is option/ is bad news

[danielf]

If you haven't done so already, may I suggest a full backup?

Could be something he has uninstalled but not removed from start up(as you have said) I normally turn everything off in startup except sound utility and anything to do with virus/firewall,it might well just be sat there and be an obvious choice

[Raistlin]

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

this should help...

it tells you what from msconfig you need/ is option/ is bad news

WoW! That's a seriously huge list of stuff

I'll get to work on it next week for him. It's driving him nuts atm

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by Raistlin

WoW! That's a seriously huge list of stuff

I'll get to work on it next week for him. It's driving him nuts atm

It has a handy search box at the top though

[Raistlin]

Originally Posted by danielf

If you haven't done so already, may I suggest a full backup?

I suggested that to him, unfortunately there's stuff on there that it's impossible to backup with any degree of certainty. There's also stuff on there that is installed and would be irreplaceable (at any cost) in the event that the machine goes down.

The best we could hope for would be to Ghost an image of the drive and then restore (with the fault) if it all goes wrong.

I'll badger him again to get this done though, good call
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Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Could be something he has uninstalled but not removed from start up

Which was pretty much the conclusion that I came to.

I'm worried though, just before this all started he did a fairly major cleanup excersize (unwanted software, virus checks, spyware checks). I'm hoping that in the process of doing this a bit of software has simply suffered from the age-old dodgy uninstaller. If it's something nasty that has been removed and left odd traces still knocking about it could be difficult to fix.....
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Originally Posted by monkeybreath

It has a handy search box at the top though

Saw that, cheers