The procedure entry point DecodePointer could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll

Question

I had this error when opening notepad and sometimes other software until I reinstalled Windows 2000 yesterday. It's come back after I copied a profile over. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Solution

DecodePointer is a function which comes with Windows XP SP2 and is not supported on Windows 2000 (see here). So my guess is that you installed software which is not suited for Windows 2000 and which perhaps overwrote some DLLs with newer improper versions.

Comments

[James P.]

Thanks for clarifying this. So it would appear that kernel32.dll is being changed somehow as notepad is supposed to be standard. I've installed Avast and TortoiseSVN so I suspect this is coming from another source. A virus scan found a rogue dll in the temp folder but nothing conclusive yet.

[James P.]

Upon close investigation, the original dll from another install is 732.432 bytes and the modified date is tuesday 7 december 1999, 14:00:00. The other kernel32.dll is in all uppercase and is 712.464 bytes and modified date is tuesday 16 august 2005, 02:39:00. Hoping that the system file checker is properly disable, I'm going to see if reinstalling a service pack will solve the issue.