When starting my computer the following error message appears on the screen: “Error loading C:\PROGRA~1\MYWEBS~1\bin\M3PLUGIN.DLL. The specified module could not be found”. I don’t know why this problem is occurring or how it can be fixed. The computer is running Windows XP.

This error message indicates that your computer has the MyWebSearch web browser extension installed. This is indicated by the fact a file needed for MyWebSearch cannot be found, thus producing the error message including the path to the directory containing the MyWebSearch files. MyWebSearch has a somewhat chequered history, as previous versions reportedly displayed pop-up advertisements. However, it should be noted that the manufacturer has stated that current versions of MyWebSearch do not perform such functions anymore. That said, unless you have a particular desire to run this internet browser add-on (which provides the ability to use different internet search engines from within your web browser) I always think it is a good idea to remove such add-ons since they generally just slow down your browser and cause other problems.

First, we will try properly uninstalling MyWebSearch. Go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open “Add or Remove Programs”. Check if MyWebSearch is present in the list of applications. If so, select and remove the software. If MyWebSearch is not present in the list of software then continue with the following procedures anyway. We should next run some anti-adware utilities, just in case the version of MyWebSearch installed on your computer is one of the previous versions which did display advertising. I suggest that you download and install Ad-Aware Free (www.lavasoft.com), Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org), and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads) and then scan your computer with each of these utilities removing any detected threats. Once this has finished restart the computer and check whether the problem continues.

If you do find that the message still appears on startup, then we need to manually stop the computer from trying to load that file on startup. First, we need to determine from where that item is starting. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) and click OK. In the System Configuration Utility window that appears, click the “Startup” tab. Look through the list of startup items and find the item which has “C:\PROGRA~1\MYWEBS~1\bin\M3PLUGIN.DLL” as the Path for the item. Once found, untick (disable) that item and click OK. Restart the computer. The problem should no longer occur as that item has now been disabled. Be aware, you may receive a message on startup informing you that the computer is running in Selective Startup mode. This is fine and you can dismiss that message and tick the box to not show the message again.