TOPIC:

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Avast (but also Iobit) user here. PC seems to be totally clean. Every deep scan done.
Started with a blue screen, warning of low dll cache (if I remember well).
After that, many system files were gone and networking completely upset.
Root problem seems to be an "unavailable RPC server".
Spent hours and hours but still not solved.
Posting at my friend's house now...

A knackered hard drive will "lose" files too. Main culprit this time of year is wildly varying temperature - HDDs don't like being spun up cold, condensation inside plays havoc with them

Yes, that was a consideration also.
But Sentinel says the hard disc is healthy as a horse...

... at the time of testing. The issues arise when the HDD is cold & tries to write/update system files, & the written data is corrupt, then the PC doesn't recognise the files & thinks they're not there. Nothing actually wrong with the HDD once all its internals are dry & the same temperature. You get this a lot in Norfolk, as most of us can't afford to keep the house heated 24/7 in winter, hence HDDs get exposed to extremes of temperature. The damage to files gets done when the thing is running from very cold & warming up. If you warm it up first before running it, it doesn't happen. Similar to sticking a cold CD in a warm drive...

A trick would be to clone the drive at regular intervals & keep the clone somewhere safe until needed, then plug it in & transfer the info back (When the PC is suitably warm). Merely having a backup drive also plugged in won't work as the PC will try to "talk" to it as soon as you switch on (Can't think what it's called, y'know when you have 2x drives & they constantly back eachother up...)

I certainly need to start looking into doing good back ups...
But I'm back on the net!



My brother found a page that I printed out at at the internet place.
Followed the "hardcore method" :

How to recover a really dead Windows XP (SP2/SP3) TCP/IP stack