conflict with Rundll32.exe

I’m posting this in the hope that it may help others, as it strikes me as a very unusual software conflict.

I recently upgraded the sound driver on my Dell XPS M1530. An unexpected feature of this upgrade was that whenever I plug in a microphone or headphones into one of the three jacks at the front of my laptop, the SigmaTel Audio Control Panel pops up. When I click on any part of the app window, it hangs, before giving the error message, “windows host process (rundll32) has stopped working”. In the Problem Report Information icon in the system tray, the message pops up, “WindowBlinds has stopped working properly”. I excluded rundll32.exe in the change-the-look-of-an-app section of the Settings tab in Window Blinds, rebooted, and when I next plugged a microphone or headphones into my laptop, the SigmaTel Audio Control Panel popped up, working correctly.

The above is a concise explanation of what happened – in reality, it took over 6 hours at different sittings to sort out the problem, as I initially thought it was a conflict with other software. I’ve no idea why Window Blinds should conflict with rundll32 in this way. I hope this information will be of use to someone else.