How to Reactivate the Inoperative Help and Support Center in Windows


The Windows help and support center which could be called up via the ‘Help and support’ option in the Start menu had always proved to be very convenient. And then it suddenly stopped functioning without any apparent reason. You can solve this problem and the function can mostly be resurrected via the command line. The procedure involves simple code and it can be done as follows..

Start it with ‘Start > Run’, and followed by the ‘cmd’ call. Type the following command and confirm it with [Enter].

net stop helpsvc
cd /d %windir%\pchealth\helpctr
rd packagestore /s /q
cd binaries
start /w helpsvc /svchost
netsvcs /regserver /install

Open the ‘Task manager’ with the [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] key combination and then select the ‘Processes’ tab, then right click on each of the following entries and click on the ‘End process’ key:

helpsvc.exe
helphost.exe
helpctr.exe

Then switch to prompt again and enter Net start helpsvc and press [Enter]. This should make the help and the support center function.

Filed under: Windows XP
Tags: , , ,
August 31, 2010 by: Prasanth Chandra

Leave a Reply