Cannot open control panel apps?

[Girl]

hi im running windows xp home on an old (inherited) toshiba satellite laptop. all is running fine apart from i get a run ddl as an app error whenever i try to open any applications in control panel....as far i can remember i havent had a problem with it up till now (but i cant remember having to open any apps in ctrl panel till now) i have run the 8 step program but it didnt find anything anywhere as this lappy was used by my 65 year old aunt who just played on pogo everyday?

i need to upgrade the gfx drivers and i dont know how to do this without getting into ctrl panel? any help is greatly appreciated

cheers
louise

does no one have any solutions? or even a suggestion?

 

[Route44]

I inherited an Toshiba last year, so I know where you are coming from. I would say this belongs in the forum that deals with laptops called Mobile Computing.

That being said, I would recommend the following:

1. Go to the Start menu, find Run, type in ChkDsk, and click Okay. It has three stages. At Stage 2 tell us if it says "Recovering lost files." This test runs fast.

2. Toshiba used a lot of Hitachi harddrives. Since this is an old system go to Seagate's website and find their free harddrive diagnostic utility called SeaTools. Download and run all three tests: S.M.A.R.T., Short DST, and Long DST. We are trying to determine the integrity of your harddrive. I did this on mine and it passed the first two twice, but failed the long twice. Time for a new harddrive.

3. You may also want to check out Toshiba's own forums. http://laptopforums.toshiba.com/tshb/