Accidently deleted some windows files

during a spyware cleanup

[Raymond]

I was deleting a bunch of spyware on my comp yesterday and I think I accidently deleted the search program in windows. Now when I use the search function, it gives an error message "A file that is required to run Search Companion cannot be found. You may need to run setup".

What are my options? Will repairing windows work?

[encyclo]

Grab the original install CDs and run the repair option - it should be able to fix things for you. However, you may need to reapply patches and service packs afterwards, so you'll need to run Windows Update afterwards to make sure.

If you know which specific files were deleted, then you can also extract them directly from the .CAB files on the install CD.

[Larryhat]

You might consider switching back to DOS. DOS 5.0 was my favorite, though I hear 6.0 better. The problem is that there is no internet access however, and postage alone will eat you up alive. There are certain time-delay penalties as well. - LH

[georgeek]

The problem is that there is no internet access...

Oh yes there is :) J.D.Chapman's excellent BareBones....

Next you will be saying there isn't a DOS for the native 32-bit environment :)

[encyclo]

Guys, you're getting hopelessly off-topic! But to continue in the same vein, MS-DOS is completely unsupported (but I believe you can download it for free from Microsoft), but you can use FreeDOS [freedos.org] which is compatible with MS-DOS and still alive and well.

[2oddSox]

Raymond, there is some more information here [support.microsoft.com] including a hotfix which may help.

[Raymond]

Thanks alot. I'll try the repair windows option.