After upgrading to XP SP2, and then performing lots of updates, I started getting the following while entering a URL in the IE address bar:

the requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context

The updates were very slow (pc only had 200MB RAM), and it just didn’t feel right… also trying to view the diplay properties from control panel suddenly allocated 400Mb RAM (via rundll32.exe) … not good in a 200MB PC 🙁

With a bit searching, it turns out that ie7 can sometimes fail to install properly. The solution seems to be:

uninstall ie7, reboot, test that ie6 works fine, (i then reboot again, for good measure), then reinstall ie7, reboot, then everything should be fine.

For some reason the control panel display properties still allocates 400Mb (but then releases it when the display properties window is closed…

Given that the customer doesn’t want to buy any more ram to improve his PC speed, then I find its just not worth tracking down the problem.

In the unlikely event that it becomes an issue, then a memory upgrade will help a lot, and it will give me time to find out why rundll32.exe suddenly uses a lot of memory on behalf of display properties