As my computer is booted the following message appears: “Time Executable has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost”. It is common for this message to appear more than a dozen times a day, but it does not seem to have any adverse effects. I have done some research on this problem, and it seems that many other people are experiencing a similar problem. One user reported the problem stopped after uninstalling their printer. Interestingly enough my problem may also be related to the printer as I noticed that the message appears after every printing task. How can I get rid of this error message? The computer is running Windows XP Home Edition.

When I was researching your question I also found the references to printer drivers being the cause of the problem. In order to establish whether this is the case, when the error message appears click the “Click Here” link to view more details on the error. This will produce additional details regarding the error, particularly the module in which the error occurred. The module should be a particular filename, which tells us which file or executable program on the computer caused the error. Once you have the details of the faulting module we need to determine the nature and origin of the module. It is unlikely you will be able to make this determination purely from the name of the module file, since it will probably be fairly nondescript. As such, use Google to search for the name of the file. In theory, this should provide some links pertaining to the nature of the file. I would predict that you will find the faulting module is related to your printer or printer drivers, since all the signs seem to point to this being the problem (for example, the error occurs every time you print something from the computer).

Assuming the error does relate to your printer, we have narrowed down the problem. This confirms the diagnosis which both you and I found on the internet through researching the problem, and explains why the problem occurs every time you print. Additionally, it would be happening on startup since most printers include utilities which load on startup to monitor the status of the printer. When this loads it could be causing the error to appear. It seems that when the Time Executable error can be attributed to the printer the remedy is to download updated printer drivers from the manufacturer. Presumably this was a fault in the earlier version of drivers which has been resolved in the later releases. I suggest that before you download the updated drivers you uninstall/delete the existing printer and then do the reinstallation from scratch – this will ensure that the existing drivers do not interfere with the installation of the new drivers. Should the reinstallation of the drivers not fix the problem, you may wish to contact the technical support for your printer manufacturer to check whether this is a known issue. Indications from the research conducted on this problem seem to show there is a known fault and the printer manufacturer support may be able to provide you with a quick solution to fixing this problem.

However, in the event that the module causing the fault does not related to your printer drivers or printing in general, it appears that something else on your computer is causing the problem. In this situation, I assume that you have already determined the nature or origin of the faulting module, as you would have made this determination when you realised that it wasn’t related to printing. If the faulting module is related to a third-party piece of software on your computer then you should try uninstalling that software to see whether it resolves the problem. Assuming the problem stops once the software is removed, you should check whether an updated version of the software is available which addresses the problem.

The next possibility is that the faulting module is a Windows module and is related to the Windows system itself rather than a third-party application. This situation is more difficult to remedy as it is not the case of simply reinstalling an application, but short of reinstalling Windows itself we need to find a method to fix the problematic file. As a first step, we will try running the Windows System File Checker (SFC) utility. This will scan the computer for missing or corrupt Windows files and replace these files with known good copies from the original Windows CD. Make sure you have your Windows CD handy, and then go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “sfc /scannow” (without the quotes, and make sure to include the space between “sfc” and “/scannow”) then click OK. The SFC will immediately commence operation. Once it has completed it will exit silently with no user feedback, at which point you can assume it has finished its operation. Restart the computer and check whether the problem persists. If the problem does continue, please contact me again with further details about the exact module which is causing the fault.