Message with 4 squares in it keeps appearing on boot into windows..

fitzm

Senior member
Mar 17, 2000
691
0
0
Error message below pops up twice as desktop loads up:

"Windows cannot find??????.Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the start button, and then click search."

A second box pops up with similar message and it too also pops up twice but all four boxes can be cancelled immediately and all seems fine.

I can't find any help after googling it and reading several threads with similar message/problems for several hours.
 

fitzm

Senior member
Mar 17, 2000
691
0
0
Also......coincidentally, in MSCONFIG, four entries with multiple "squares" are present and unchecked but no help.

And, I don't know if it matters but there are two admin accounts on the computer but only one account gets the pop up boxes. Weird.
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
9,558
0
76
Well the boxes may indicate that they're characters that aren't representable in the English character set you're using. If something weird installed that tried to create folders with odd characters, and then you removed it, and Windows is still trying to load a driver for it or something, that could explain it.

Use one of the many freely available registry cleanup tools (http://www.ccleaner.com/ is one I use), it may be able to locate any invalid entries in the Registry, and you can use it to remove any startup shortcuts.