[aclivity]

I'm really struggling here - I've been called in to do some free PC support for my dad's PC.

It's failing to boot with an error as follows:

"Explorer.EXE - Unable To Locate Component"

The error text is

"This application has failed to start because fwpkclnt.sys was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem"

From all that I can see, fwpkclnt.sys is actually a Windows Vista component, and he is running Windows XP.

I've tried Safe Mode - fails for the same reason.

I've tried Safe Mode with Command Prompt, works, but the same error comes up when I try to run system restore from the command prompt.

I don't want to have to reinstall windows, but I may have to if I can't find out how to fix it. Luckily his PC has a restore partition, but there is a lot of stuff he will lose if I have to do that. Of course, he has never done anything like a backup!

Any clues?

TIA

Andy