This is a toughie. I will try to explain the best as I can. It has me absolutely baffled.
I have some computers that get an error "Error loading gdi.exe you must reinstall windows." I know what is causing the error, but I do not know the cause of what is causing it.
This error is caused by the font directory being either deleted from c:\windows or by being removed from its location and placed in the c:\windows\system directory. I have monitored and researched all the programs on these computers. I use a ghost image of the computer setup so that ALL my computers are identical. NOTE: I have 125 pc's and this error only occurs continuously on 3 of them.
I am also a vb programer and wrote a program that would monitor the font directory if it happened to disappear, but the problem still happened which tells me that this is occurring right at shutdown.
I have removed programs that I thought were doing it just to have this problem occur again.
The hard drives are perfectly fine and the computers work well when I reinstall and set the computers back up.
Going to command prompt only, I see that the directory structure is fine and norton reports no errors. I look in c:\windows and find that the font directory is missing.
I create a new font directory and attrib it +h +a +s +r for hidden, archive, system, readonly - same attributes on the original directory- I copy fonts into this directory (previously saved elsewhere as a test) restart the computer and I still recieve the error. Is there a way to create the font directory so it will once again be useful in windows? I thought that creating the font directory as a system directory wwould be enough but there is obviously more to the font directory then meets the eye.
Please someone help. THis is driving me up a wall. I have tolerated it for the past few months but it is simply getting out of hand.
Let me repeat, these computers are absolutely no different then half the computers on my LAN.
Thanks, more points are available for an answer that will get me through this. I am an avid programmer, and know computers quite well so get as technical as you want with me.
Computers are
Dell optiplex
PPro 333mhz
64mg ram
win95 osr2
Thanks!