Timedate.cpl not working anymore

[frk]

Hello! First of all, excuse my english. I would have liked to be more present when I signed up, but I didn't, and now I'm here to ask for help with a little issue I'm having right now.

A few days ago I found that double clicking on the watch on the system tray doesn't show anymore the "Time and date" control panel. I'm sure it worked until a couple of week earlier, cause I use to open it often for watching the calendar.
If I open Windows control panel there is no icon relative to time ad date setting.

Obviously, I did a search on the web, but the suggestions I found seem not to apply to my case. In fact, the file "TIMEDATE.CPL" is correctly in the folder Windows\System, but if i double click on it, nothing happens (maybe the hourglass cursor appears for a brief instant).

As I use to save ghost images of my system every while, I tried to extract (with GhostExplorer) the TIMEDATE.CPL from a saved image, but it doesn't work anyway, so I'm not sure the problem is in the file itself.

Does someone have any idea about this little problem?

Thank you in advance.

 

EDIT: I'm talking about Windows ME, sorry for not mentioning it.

Edited March 7, 2019 by frk
details missing

[jaclaz]

What happens if you:

http://www.tburke.net/info/rundll.htm

run from a command prompt window:

RUNDLL32 SHELL32.DLL,Control_RunDLL TIMEDATE.CPL,@0,1

It is possible that the actual timedate.cpl is just fine but *something* has happened to one of its dependencies, you might want to try tracing it in Dependency Walker:

http://www.dependencywalker.com/

jaclaz

[frk]

Thank you for your kind reply.

If i run "RUNDLL32 SHELL32.DLL,Control_RunDLL TIMEDATE.CPL,@0,1" nothing happens.

I tried to open timedate.cpl with Dependency Walker (thanks for suggestion) and it say:

Quote

No DOS or PE signature found. This is not a valid 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module.

In an older thread I found the tip of running this command: "regsrv32 C:\Windows\System\TIMEDATE.CPL" bu if I do so, I get the message "Impossible to find regsrv32" (translated from my language).

Any ideas?

[jaclaz]

Well regsrv32 is a way to (re-)register the executable in the Registry, though it didn't work for you I doubt that even if it ran it would have changed anything.

The "No DOS or PE signature found. This is not a valid 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module." is "queer", the .cpl files are renamed .dll's (hence the possibility to run them via RUNDLL32), that DW should "understand" just fine.

It should mean that *somehow* the actual timedate.cpl is corrupted.

I just checked on an old ME install disk I have (it is inside \win9x\WIN_9.CAB\) the file there is 36864 bytes in size, dated 2000-06-08 and - once extracted - opens just fine in Dependency Walker. (this is an English version, I don't think I have handy an Italian version, that may well have different date/size, to check it)

In any case, if you open it in *any* hex/disk viewer/editor, its first two bytes should be (regardless of the version) the "normal" DOS signature of 4D5A or "MZ":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable

jaclaz

 

 

[loblo]

34 minutes ago, frk said:

Thank you for your kind reply.

If i run "RUNDLL32 SHELL32.DLL,Control_RunDLL TIMEDATE.CPL,@0,1" nothing happens.

I tried to open timedate.cpl with Dependency Walker (thanks for suggestion) and it say:

In an older thread I found the tip of running this command: "regsrv32 C:\Windows\System\TIMEDATE.CPL" bu if I do so, I get the message "Impossible to find regsrv32" (translated from my language).

Any ideas?

 

 

 

Since Dependency Walker finds your cpl file is not a valid executable it means this file is corrupted.

 

Run scandisk including surface scan on the system drive. If it tells you something about bad sectors, replace your drive, if it doesn't, replace your cpl file from backup or install cab.

[frk]

Well. guys, thank you very much! I tought it was not that simple, cause I tried a .cpl file from a backup and it didn't work... but maybe that backup was already corrupted, cause I extracted the original file from my WinME install disk (thank jaclaz for telling me the correct .cab) and now it works fine. There is also the icon in Control Panel, as it should be. :-)

Thanks also to loblo for his suggestions: I checked my hard disks recently, also changed one of them with a brand new one, but was anyway a good tip. I can add that I defragged them with Vopt Millennium Edition and that caused the failure of one disk (the one with Win XP)... maybe it was also the cause of this minor issue...

Hope this could be useful to other users too.

Thanks again!

[jaclaz]

Good .

I wouldn't attribute responsabilities to running this or that tool, this kind of issues tend to happen "just because", maybe defragging anticipated the failure of the disk by three seconds or by three years, you'll never know.

jaclaz

[frk]

Yes, you're right, I expressed myself in an unfortunate way. Didn't mean to blame Vopt, I only intended that the defragmentation triggered the arising of that problem, wich probably would have occurred anyway sooner or later.