My Delphi 7 installation started giving this error. The error message shows the correct help path, but with the backslashes removed. The Help files are present in the expected location (C:\Program Files\Borland\Delphi7\Help). I'm running D7 under Windows 7. It was working previously.

Sometimes I also get this error :

I have searched on Google, and I find others reported the problem, but no solution has been posted.
regedit) for the string "filesborlanddelphi". If there is a match, correct it there. - Andreas Rejbrand