OLE2.DLL error on 3rd party installation...help, please. 1

[torandson]

Hi,
Near the end of a large installation of 3rd party software on my XP Pro system I got the following message:

The application or DLL E:\WINDOWS\ystem32\OLE2.DLL is not a valid windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette.

This installation went seriously haywire with many application files written to the wrong partition on the wrong drive. Essentially, the program file, readme, help file, icon, associated files and folders, etc.,---evidently, the entire installation, not just the data library---was all written to a partition specified during the install process to be the root of the path to a folder for a library of some very large data files used in conjunction with this program.

The program in question is version 2 of an installed application that was not uninstalled before installing the new version. I see two entries in the Start menu: one for version one and another for version two, but the target location for the files referenced by the version two shortcuts is the root of the system drive where no such files exist. These files are actually all located on the root of the data partition.

Can anyone explain what happened and why?

What is OLE2.DLL?

MOST IMPORTANTLY, how can I compare a file on my system drive with the same file on the XP installation disk to see if they are bit-for-bit the same, or if the file on my system has been corrupted?

--torandson

 

[linney]

I don't know whether you can make any use of this, later on in the article it talks about "There are other utilities that are available besides Windiff.exe that you can use to compare local ASCII and binary files".

How to Use the Windiff.exe Utility

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;159214&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

ole2.dll (Microsoft OLE Library) - Details.

The library file ole2.dll, is required by windows and is used when performing OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) operations. OLE allows objects created in one application to be embedded in documents/objects created by a different applications e.g. embedding an Excel spreadsheet inside a Word document. OLE is used fairly extensively in windows applications.

First thoughts are to uninstall the two versions (or just the latest one) and try again with version two, or settle for version one.

 

[torandson]

linney,
Thanks. Yes, that's basically what I'm going to do. I'm going to roll the system back to an image that was made before version one was installed and then install version two and see what happens. If that succeeds, I'll ignore version one. If not, I'll ignore version two and reinstall version one.

Thanks for the information about what an OLE2.dll file is, that helps to explain where the problem may be, since both versions of the program being installed are designed to be host or client for other applications and plugins. My guess is that there was a "Who's on first?" confusion going on during installation. This is version 2.0, which is to say the 'customer-as-beta-tester' release prior to the predictable 2.1 update that will follow after tech support has compiled a list of things that need to be fixed based on customer feedback. It's typical.

By the way, it occurred to me that I have at my disposal a means of comparing the questionable file with a known good copy. I think I can compare two binary files in Linux if I put the two files on a floppy. Don't know why I didn't think of that before.

-torandson

 

[torandson]

linney,
Okay, I rolled the system back to the state it was in before installation of version one and just installed version two. That worked fine. Fortunately, since I had installed version one only recently because of delays caused by other problems (I received version two in the mail the day after installing version one and first tried installing it only a few days later), the required rollback only took the system back as far as last Saturday. There remain now only a few applications that need to be reinstalled to bring the system back to its 'maximum-capability-thus-far' condition.

I haven't checked the OLE2.DLL file yet, but assume the installation corrupted the dll rather than the other way around, since it installed okay without version one on the machine. (This file is compressed as 'ole2.dl_' on my installation CD and I don't know how to uncompress such a file for examination.)

-torandson

 

[linney]

You can try the "Expand" tab in MsConfig.

Or copy the file to any other folder and use WinZip to uncompress it.

Type "Expand" in the Help and Support program for a couple of other methods.

How to expand Windows XP files from the installation disk

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;888017&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[torandson]

linney,
Thanks, I'll check those out.
I can hardly begin tell you how valuable this forum has repeatedly been for me.
--torandson