Windows Media Player Question

[steav]

Ok I'm not sure where this question should go. I just got a Toshiba Satellite laptop yesterday and everything worked fine. I put about 8 cd's or so on it and it worked fine. Earlier today I used windows media player for about an hour with no problems. A few hours ago my cousin downloaded and installed xvid codec I believe it was called (btw I'm not very computer savvy) and I guess something called blinkx beats was installed with it or something, maybe it was already on the computer. But anyway after that was downloaded I uninstalled both of them and I guess they both uninstalled fine. I then attempted to open internet explorer (I also have firefox) and it wouldn't even attempt to load. The hours glass would flash on the screen once and it would stop loading. I tried to uninstall internet explorer but I think I just deleted the shortcuts and now I can't find it. The same thing happened with windows media player, but I didn't try and uninstall it, I just left it alone. I even put a CD in the drive and it did nothing. I am running windows 7 and idk what to do.

[FTT]

What model Satellite and what operating system?

There's ways to repair IE and WMP also you can either type in the Run box or do a search and recreate a shortcut.

It sounds like the programs you uninstalled took some bits and pieces along with them. Were you prompted about any dll's that may be needed for IE and or WMP as the programs were uninstalling?

[steav]

I dont think it prompted for any of that...but do you know a way to fix it? I have windows 7 and I guess its a toshiba satellite L655.

[steav]

but idk what dll's are

[steav]

I also just tried microsoft office starter and some of the windows live programs and they wont open either

[FTT]

You may need to choose a last known good, or a restore point to a period prior to your brother installing the softwares and drivers on your notebook. He could have downloaded the programs from a less than reputable source and you ended up with a pooched system.

Dll is an acronym for Dynamic Link Library but in simpler terms it is basically the drivers needed for whatever application they were designed for. Everything has drivers, vid card, sound card, software players like WMP, just about anything and everything relies on them in some way, shape or form.

Do you have the recovery disks for your laptop? If so, how many and what do the labels say?

The blinkx beats software would be what I think did not uninstall properly due to an inferior uninstallation package and it is an online streaming movie program which are notorious for getting into just about every nook and cranny in your system, so you are going to need to repair IE, your sound and WMP (who knows what else at this point) so a repair install, restore point or similar is about your only choices.