How Matt Got His Geek Back

A little over a year ago, I purchased a new Dell Studio XPS 8000 computer. Overall, I have been very happy with it, but a few months after I purchased it I tried to write a VBS script and got an error message: “Can’t find script engine VBScript”. Previous experience meant that I needed to install the dll, which is easy enough. Just open a command prompt and type “regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll”.

I did that and received a prompt sayuing “DllRegisterServer in vbscript.dll succeeded.”, which meant that it worked. However, when I tried running the VBS script again, I got the same error message. I spent severeal hours Googling it and trying various things. No luck. Fortunately, nothing critical I have needs VBScript. Also, I figured that it might be fixed in some windows update down the road. It still rankled, though, that my $1300+ PC couldn’t run it.

A week and a half-ago, I was working on a script at work and realized I needed a debugger. I came across VBSedit and tried it out. It seemed to be exactly what I needed, however, I would have to pay the $60 it costs myself, as technically it isn’t needed for my job. I figured that it would be much easier to swallow that if I could use it on my PC at home, so when I got home I checked to see if VBS was still broken. It was.

When I got home, I googled the problem again. This time I had a bit more luck. I found this page on NitroPDF where it mentioned a registry fix if registering the vbscript.dll didn’t work. Using that to refine my search, I found this page on answers.microsoft.com. I checked the registry for the class key mentioned. As mentioned in the thread, I found HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}\InprocServer32 pointing to a McAfee directory. Now I knew what the problem was.

One of the first things I did when I bought my PC was to uninstall McAfee. I prefer F-Secure AntiVirus and already had a license for that. I guess that McAfee redirects the vbscript.dll to iteself so that it can catch script virues. When it uninstalls, it doesn’t fix the redirection, so that a) windows thinks vbscript is still installed and b) it points to a non-existant dll. So basically my problem was due to a crappy McAfee unistall program.

I considered just deleted the registry key, but figured McAfee might have left more junk around, so I ran the McAfee cleaner the thread mentioned. I reran the regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll command. This time, when I ran a vbscript – it worked perfectly.

I decided to post this just in case someone else has a problem with “regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll” not working.

P.S. I was doing the above while I was in my regular Wednesday night chat. When it worked, I mentioned to Elais that “I feel like a whole geek” again and summarized what I had done. She replied “How Matt Got His Geek Back”. Hence, the title of this post.