Well, it’s the first one of the New Year that I saw. A friend of mine sent an email early on New Year’s Day:

Help! After defragging and rebooting I got the error message: ’Application failed to initialize: 0×800106BA. A problem caused Windows Defender Service to stop. To start the service, restart your computer or search Help and Support on how to start the service manually.’

Neither one of those options worked, so my friend tried an over-the-top install using WindowsDefender.msi and got another error message. She then panicked, believing she would be attacked immediately by all of the digital diseases known to man and Microsoft.

I had her uninstall Defender before trying a reinstall. This worked. Turns out the Windows Defender beta she was running expired on December 31.

So, Microsoft, if you’re listening, it would be nice if you had built in an error trap informing the user to upgrade rather than just crashing the app.

I  hope this glitch didn’t carry over into the Windows Defender version that is included with Vista…

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Cheers!

The Geek

Have a computer problem? A question about your latest gadget? Click here to Ask the Geek! Kenny “The Geek” Harthun has been playing with geeky stuff since 1965. He’s a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer with Connective Computing, Inc. providing network, desktop and info security support services to a wide range of clients.