Software Distribution Service 3.0

[rcbobsmith]

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Starting August 28, after some restarts of my computer (with Windows XP, SP3), something has been occasionally wiping out most of my settings, as follows:

1. Desktop wallpaper is the default Windows XP rolling green hills wallpaper, not my chosen wallpaper (Cliff in Clouds).
2. All my icons have been moved to the left side of the desktop.
3. There are no icons for Excel or Word.
4. At the right side of the taskbar, a pop-up offers me a tour of Windows XP, as if it is a new OS.
5. There are no buttons for Desktop or IE on the taskbar.
6. The taskbar has a wide button for I.R.I.S., which I hardly ever use.
7. My Favorites list is gone.
8. Task Manager when called comes up in a small window, not the width of the screen.
9. My Documents contains only My Music (with only sample music), and My Pictures (empty).
10. To get to my actual documents, I have to navigate to Local disk (C:)\Documents and Settings\...
11. In file explorer, all folders, subfolders, and files are shown as icons, not in Details view.
12. My Start menu shows IE, Outlook, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger (which I don’t use), Tour Windows XP, and File and Settings Transfer Wizard. The Start menu is missing about 10 programs that I use often.
13. Excel and Word are not shown under Start / All Programs, even though Outlook, Powerpoint, and Outlook Express are shown.
14. Uniblue Register Booster does not show in Startup tab of msconfig. However, msconfig did show selective startup, as I had set.
15. About Windows shows Windows 5.1 (Build 2600,… Service Pack 3), copyright 2007. At least it’s not back to 2002, or 2005, when I bought XP Pro.

If I do a system restore to a point before the last run of Software Distribution Service 3.0, which runs at 3 AM every day, I get my settings back. Then McAfee has to play with (update) itself for about 25 minutes.

Should I disable Software Distribution Service 3.0 somehow, or could one of the programs that is being "updated" be causing the problem?

Thanks!

[Leonard]

Run your browser and then visit the Microsoft website. From there search for Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. Run this and choose Software Distribution Service. You can remove this from here if you are getting error because of this. This happens because your user profile is either deleted or changed and by system restore the profile is restored. Stop some applications like Software Distribution Service and then check back.