Hello

Recently I have been receiving errors like "helpctre.exe failed to initialize, the application failed to initialize properly(0x000012d)" previously, everytime i open an application the help window of that application always pop out, and evertime you close the help window, it regenerates more than 3 times opening and popping out . This keeps the system from hanging. After few weeks, when you boot you computer, the same ERROR comes up and your system already hangs. the only catch is that there is always an activity on your hard disk as you can see it on it hard drive led of the laptop.

I ANTIVIRUS and antispyware, it FOUND problems and had deleted it. That is why I decided to reformat my hard drive and reinstall windows xp.. NO problem with windows xp upon reinstallation, the laptop was running smoothly and SLIGHT faster. However when I updated to service pack to the same problem came back.

Any ideas on how to solve this mess....

Thanks a lot.Sounds like the F1 key is sticking...Try this:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/rebuildhelp.htm

Alan <>< after series of testing, I found out that the f1 was sticking which caused the problem. it sound like a replacement of the entire laptop keyboard, but one technician told me to just put any non conductor between the silicon and the metal surface of the keyboard, and it WORKED......Thanks for posting back with what worked...