Missing dll

[gabesmuse]

Yesterday I upgrade my laptop and my desktop to Windows 10 from Windows 7. The laptop upgrade took quite a while, but went very well. I was able to customize my settings easily. The installation on the desktop seemed to work fine, but I get a message that there is a missing dll for a system menu. I cannot customize my settings so my default application don't show up there and I cannot change the weather setting, as the app doesn't recognize my location. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Trouble]

You might want to try to perform and in-place upgrade repair. That is to say...... upgrade it again, overtop of itself from within your current install, just double click setup.exe in the installation media. Just be sure to check the little box to get updates as part of the upgrade process.
That will generally keep all your programs, data, drivers and such safe, but.....
I would still create a disk image before going forward.

Installation media can be obtained here
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
OR here
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

If you already have the ISO you can simply mount it from within Windows 10 and run setup.exe from there.

Neosmart has a pretty good article on it here https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-10-repair-installation/
You can skip the first couple paragraphs where they are promoting their recovery CDs and drill down to the meat of the article below.

 

[gabesmuse]

I've tried reinstalling a couple of times. Nothing changed. I can't go back to 7 as I get an error that the files I need were removed. Windows update won't run either. I'm stuck.

 

[Trouble]

I get a message that there is a missing dll for a system menu

Can you provide some specifics as to the details of the actual error regarding the missing .dll
Perhaps use the Windows Snipping Tool to get an image of the error and attach it to your next post.

 

[gabesmuse]

The window is labeled RunDLL. The message is C:\PROGRA-1\COMMON-1\System\SysMenu.dll module not found.

I've also discovered I have no access to Documents and Settings on my C drive. I get access denied. I have full control of everything on my machine according to the permissions. I can access my photos by using Picasa.

 

[Trouble]

The message is C:\PROGRA-1\COMMON-1\System\SysMenu.dll module not found.

That sounds like a startup program that has been uninstalled unsuccessfully still trying to run at startup and or launch itself periodically during normal operations.
Use something like Autoruns (not Autorunsc) from here to see if it spots it
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Fire it up (by right clicking it and choosing run as administrator) press escape to stop the initial search and use options from the menu bar and select Hide Microsoft Entries as well as the other two chosen by default, hit the refresh icon to restart the scan.

I have no access to Documents and Settings on my C drive

"Documents and Settings is simply an old Junction Point for XP backwards compatibility and probably doesn't contain anything anyway.
One problem at a time. See if you can resolved the .dll issue and we can revisit the permissions issue afterwards

 

[gabesmuse]

I ran autoruns and came up with a number of items that were not found.

 

[Alan Sh]

What a useful program. Thank you

Alan