AumHa Forums

Hi Guys,

I thought I had my old W98se running like a well oiled machine until just recently when a bug has arisen that's irritating me. What I don't understand is why... it's not I've played around with any files or tweaks or anything; anyway, some background.

I have Dr.Watson start up automatically at bootup (call me cynical if you like). I have HP scanning software installed for one of their scanners (3970) which works well. I use their Photo & Imaging software quite a bit and one particular feature, Album Printing.

Just recently, after preparing an "album" for printing and sending it to the printer, Dr.Watson kicks in with the following message:

"MFCDLL Shared Library - Retail version attempted to read from memory that does not exist. It may be using an uninitialized variable, or it may be attempting to access memory afer having freed it.
Module MFC42.dll
Retail version 6.00.9782.0
Visual C++ "

Thinking something's become corrupt, I checked SFC which didn't report anything, I used Registry First Aid to clean up the registry and fix any broken links (in this order) and still didn't make any difference. Ultimately I tried the repair utility in HP's software which didn't help, so finally uninstalled & reinstalled it which totally messed it up so I performed a "clean" uninstal wiping off every reference to HP before perfoming a clean install. That got it all working again properly other than this problem... so I'm back to square one.

I've searched Microsoft & the net and found very technical references to rewriting code and links to MDAC which wasn't helpful to a layman like myself. Please help. Thanks.

Sorry you haven't gotten a reply on this...there isn't much to go on, and with HP software there is much to go wrong!

Does the printing operation continue, or does it fail after the error?
Disable your setting to have Dr. Watson start with Windows...if you have a system error, it will start automatically....it does not need to be running constantly in the background. Does the error still occur after changing this?
Search the entire hard drive for MFC42.dll, using Start> Find> Files or Folders. How many copies do you find, in what folders, and what version numbers?

@Glen

It would appear that wharfhouse has resolved the issue to his/her satisfaction...
cf. http://forum.processlibrary.com/showthread.php?t=67867

Thanks Doddie. Not sure if that would be considered "resolved" or just "not reproducible".

I suspect Cleansweep had more to do with creating the problem than with fixing it.

The forum handler's HJT "fixes" are irrelevant...and not only re: wharfhouse's issue.

Hi Guys,

I'd given up thinking I wasn't going to hear from you! Just been alerted that there's a response. Thanks for your comments Glee (we've met before!), but as you've already sussed from the other forum, my problem seems to have sorted itself after running Cleansweep and/or Registry First Aid. However, it doesn't explain how it got 'broke' in the first place and I don't fully understand how tweaking settings with HJT alters anything as you questioned, unless it will prevent a repeat performance.

But at the moment, all is well. Thanks for your help.

No, the changes they had you make with HJT had no bearing on the issue in any way, nor were they entries to be concerned about in general.

Glad it's working now....I still suspect your "registry cleaners" had more to do with causing the problem than with fixing it.

+1