Sorry, but this will be long, as I've been messing with this problem for a few days now. The other evening, I suddenly started getting these errors:
Application Error
GIFException in module aviWMP54Gv4.dll at 000252AF
The net monitor icon in the system tray also went away. Only thing to do is click OK, and I was getting several of these messages. After a while I noticed I lost wireless connectivity (WMP54G nic on my Win2K pc and WRT54G router). Even clicking on the Wireless Network Monitor icon in programs did nothing.
I tried uninstall/installing the drivers from the CD and nic many times, same problem. Even tried different PCI slot. I also uninstalled the s/w and nic from safe mode several times. I searched on the net, found a few other hits, sounded like there was a memory conflict of sorts. So I made sure I stopped or uninstalled all unnecessary apps, AV, f/w, etc. I even uninstalled SP4 going back to SP1. No go.
After several attempts to reinstall, I noticed that the error was popping up at the last step of installing the drivers where you're prompted to shut down the PC. If I got the error here, I knew I was hosed, again. I also found out that the network monitor app was also being installed at this point.
I finally got to someone in tech support (didnt catch name/number), but after conferring with his spvsr, I was informed I had already taken all the steps he would have me try, and that the problem was either in my pc or the NIC itself. He suggested I try installing the NIC in another PC to see if it was bad, which they would send me a new one if it was. Great.
The problem with this is that the exception error I was getting was when the NIC was not even installed!!!! So it couldnt be bad. Something had to be corrupted, and I wasnt set up to scrub the system clean and start completely fresh.
I downloaded the lastest driver, 4.1 and got the same error. I even downloaded/installed 4.0, but it doesnt have the rt61.sys drive my nic needed. I got the same error during the install process on 4.0. I even tried download and install a v2.0 driver, it obviously wouldnt work with my nic, but the network monitor installed ok, and I could launch the app. So I unstalled the V2.0 and reinstalled v4.1, same error.
So I ran the win2k repair facility, which deletes many/all of the system files and started over. Downloaded SP4 and all the related updates and hot fixes. Hoping that whatever was corrupted should be clean now. Nope, same problem. ARRRRGGGHH !!!!
At some point I noticed the programs icon for the network monitor was trying to launch InvokeSVC2.exe. There were 4 versions of this file in the Program Files folder. The network monitor program seemed to launch ok if I launched it directly from the Program Files folder (WMP54GV5.EXE). This worked, I was able to reconfig my NIC, and get connectivity over the wireless working again.
I changed the programs icon to point to the WMP54GV5.EXE file, and put a copy of it in the startup folder. I've rebooted several times, and it seems to work ok.
Sorry for the long winded novel here, but I felt it was needed. I'm going to send this to tech support to see if they have any ideas.
