What would cause dozens of my dll's to become zero-byte?

[sygyzy]

I got a new video card so I uninstalled the drivers of the previous card in Windows XP. Then I rebooted to Safe Mode and used Driver Sweeper from Guru3D.

I then shut down and removed my card and put in a new one. Unfortunately, it wouldn't display a video signal and the problem persisted even after I swapped back the old card. it turns out there's a DVI issue with my Viewsonic LCD but that's not my question.

Anyway, I switched to the VGA input and when I finally got to Windows again, I kept getting all sorts of errors like dll's not being a "valid image".

There were about 7 in /windows/system32 that were "invalid images". I looked and they were all 0 byte files.

desk.cpk
linkinfo.dll
msapsspc.dll
msimtf.dll
msxml6r.dll
rundll32.exe
themeui.dll
wzcapsi.dll
hhctrl.ocx


As you can imagine, a lot of stuff can't run with these files broken.

I fixed all but the hhcrl.ocx by copying them from backups or other locations. It's not just Windows DLL's either. rundll32.exe was zero byte and I have dll's from Dropbox and Windows home server and other programs that got wiped out.

There were also all sorts of problems installing Catalyst from AMD/ATI but that might be because of the dll's.

I ran multiple virus scans and malware scans from Safe Mode and Windows but they found absolutely nothing.

What do you think caused this?

 

[RadiclDreamer]

driver sweeper would be the obvious choice

 

[RebateMonger]

A Windows System Restore back to before the changes will probably get things working again.

Personally, I never uninstall video card drivers when changing cards. If you want to, Windows Device Manager should be able to handle that for you, rather than using a third-party program.