I have messeeeeeed up my computer, and am currently using my brother's computer to post. I don't know when I will be able to fix the problems I have caused, so I'm not sure how long it will be before I have reasonable internet access again.

While I'm waiting, I should be able to check on the Forum every now and then to see if anyone has replied to those, so I'm putting out a call to all those with technical skills to see if you can help me.

I was trying to install a new program on my computer yesterday and found that it would not run because of two missing DLLs. Instead of trying to find out why those DLLs were not installed with the program, I assumed that something had gone wrong and I had missed them in the installation. (I should have known better.) Since I knew that the program ran fine on my brother's computer, I got him to find and send me the two DLLs and I copied them into the System directory.

The program continued not to function, so I went looking for more specific help on the problem. I learned that there was a potential WinSock problem with the program on Win95 (which I am running on my machine) and that there was a fix I could download, which apparently installed WinSock. Running this, it told me that one of the two DLLs I had copied to the machine earlier was a newer version than the one that would be installed (which makes sense, since I had copied them from a Win 98 machine). I said OK, but the program continued not to function after running the installation.

I concluded that there must be some sort of incompatibility being cause by using the newer DLLs with the older WinSock, and tried to uninstall the WinSock using the directions included with it. After that, my winipcfg stopped functioning properly and I was no longer able to obtain an IP address from my ISP. Subsequent attempts at following the troubleshooting suggested by the WinSock installer have met with no success.

I'm not sure where exactly I should go from here. I cannot, of course, delete the DLLs that I erroneously copied over, and I can't seem to make any other progress. I am about to go and uninstall and then reinstall the TCP/IP protocol from the Network settings, since the WinSock installer suggested that I might need to install it. (It was already installed, but following the directions for what to do if it was already installed have met with no success.)

The other directions that met with no success involved running ws2bakup.bat from the (windows)\ws2bakup\ folder. The batch file ran some command with a -r switch on a whole bunch of files, and was apparently supposed to restore all the DLLs to the state they were at before I had installed WinSock. I got an Abort,Retry,Fail error with about six of the files when running the batch file the first time I tried, and then when I ran it again from MS-DOS mode, I got no ARF errors, but the final command ("delw2red.exe addafvxd") failed in MS-DOS mode. I then went back into Windows and ran the command from the Run thing on the Start Menu, and it worked. (In MS-DOS mode, it told me that the command could not be run from Windows.) I now have the computer booted up in Safe Mode to see if I can accomplish anything of value, although I am a little leery of trying anything, as my incompetent fumbling has only made things worse and worse so far. If anyone has any advice (other than "find a big magnet") I would appreciate hearing it.

Don Monkey