Any XP experts??

[rtrombone]

I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 with Windows XP Home Edition. One day when Poker Grapher stopped working I tried to access Windows Update. I couldn't. I got error number 0x8024D00C. After doing some research online I discovered that I may need a certain critical update. The problem is that I can't access Windows Update so I can't download it.

After doing some more poking around it appears that the root of my problems may be that Cryptographic Services aren't running. When I try to start them I get error 999 (error performing inpage operation). When I tried to install my XP Service Pack 2 CD it said that Cryptographic Services need to be running for the installation to proceed. So if I can get Cryptographic Services to run maybe everything will fall into place. As far as I can tell it's not a problem with the Remote Procedure Call service (Cryptographic Services is dependent on this).

Any ideas??