Have you checked to see if the software installation overwrote the MFC42.DLL file in the C
windows\system directory? There have been many versions of this module and they are not all compatible. You may in fact have several different MFC42.DLL files in various directories and that is ok. But if you are having the system problems that you mention I would check the aforementioned directory to see if you have the correct dll there. (What I am suggesting should not have happened but it has to me with other system files.)