Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| [XP Home] Start and Taskbar obliterated.
I was given an old laptop installed with XP Home which had numerous superfluous programs that were slowing it down to a crawl.
During my uninstallation of all the toolbars, excess nonsense and disabling of unnecessary services, I obviously killed a needed MS operation in the process. The Start button, taskbar and ALL functionality on the Desktop is gone. Ctrl + Alt + Delete does NOT work anymore either. The Desktop is a complete blank showing only the desktop background image.
System Restore was not turned on, can not be started in Safe Mode anyway, and "Last known good configuration" does not produce results.
I was able to run ALL the diagnostic tests supplied by Dell through F2 at Startup, but the tests show no errors.
I can boot into safe mode with a command prompt and some functions such as typing "Start msconfig" in the command line works, which allows me to use "Expand file" in msconfig. I tried right clicking to run Explorer through msconfig's "Expand file", but it's useless. Naturally, I can run programs such as Picassa in this manner, but little good that does now.
The CD drive looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it and is inoperable as well, so no chance of reinstalling.
Any ideas??
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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jimmie
join:2001-12-01
Sault Ste Marie, ON
| Does explorer.exe exist in the windows directory? If so what happens if you try to run it from the command prompt? Same goes for taskmgr.exe (system32 directory)
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Hardwood is the way to go. |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| said by jimmie  :Does explorer.exe exist in the windows directory? If so what happens if you try to run it from the command prompt? Same goes for taskmgr.exe (system32 directory) Yes, I can run programs from taskmgr.exe in safe mode only though. Explorer.exe refuses to run in safe mode and that is what's baffling me. It shows "Desktop" in Task Manager, but it simply cuts out by saying can't be run in safe mode, etc...
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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jimmie
join:2001-12-01
Sault Ste Marie, ON
| So explorer.exe does exist. NO error when you try to run it? Did you make and registry changes?
Make sure the Key 'Shell' exists and the value is 'explorer.exe' under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
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Hardwood is the way to go. |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| The error I get is that explorer.exe can not be run in safe mode, believe it or not.
Yes, I just checked in regedit and the key exists as stated. To make sure we are on the same page, above the key "Shell" (with explorer.exe as the value) is SfcSetting and below it ShowLogonOptions. Double checking to make sure I am in the right place.
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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Maarvin
Premium
join:2005-04-11
Denver, CO | reply to Sparrow
Have you tried turning the "Themes" service back on to Automatic?
»www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm#T: |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| Themes services is already on automatic.
I am now trying to put a shortcut of explorer into the All Users start up folder. I am running out of creative options already!
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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IamGimli
join:2004-02-28
Canada
 ·Primus Talkbroadband
 ·B2B2C High-Speed I..
| reply to Sparrow
I had somthing similar happen once where explorer.exe crashed and closing it put my system in the situation you described (nothing but a blank desktop).
When that happened all I had to do was double-click the background and task manager would come up. I then used it to run explorer.exe and everything would go back to normal. |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
1 edit | Thank you IamGimli . I am running CHKDSK right now and will try your suggestion as soon as it finishes. I can't run with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and I think I double-clicked dozens of times on the desktop out of shear frustration the last four days, but not intentionally! 
Edit to add: No, this didn't work and there is still no functionality on the desktop as first posted...
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| reply to Sparrow
Does anyone know if I can run Scheduled Tasks and try to add taskmgr.exe to run at startup in Safe Mode? I can't get "schtasks.exe" to run through the command prompt.
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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AB
Premium
join:2006-04-04
Leesburg, VA | reply to Sparrow
Is there a big I386 folder on the machine? If so, 'sfc /scannow' should be an option. |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| If you are referring to C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\I386 or C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386, they are sadly depleted on the laptop...
I tried running sfc.exe from the command prompt, and it has the same nano second showing as the start menu and taskbar, then politely goes *poof*... 
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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AB
Premium
join:2006-04-04
Leesburg, VA
| said by Sparrow :If you are referring to C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\I386 or C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386, they are sadly depleted on the laptop... I tried running sfc.exe from the command prompt, and it has the same nano second showing as the start menu and taskbar, then politely goes *poof*... No, I was referring to the core I386 folder that's sometimes copied into the Windows or system32 directories.
That's where sfc /scannow will pull the new files from, unless of course the folder's not there (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't), in which case it asks you to insert the Windows installation CD, which of course does you no good.
Just a thought. Sorry, C.S.
NEXT! |
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Sparrow
Crystal Sky
Premium
join:2002-12-03
Sachakhand
| reply to Sparrow
Never like to leave a story unfinished...
I killed the laptop completely this morning through a last ditch effort in editing the boot.ini file. Now I don't have to worry about Explorer loading anymore... A little .dll named Hal permanently locked me out! 
As always, thanks everyone for your efforts - we tried!
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"Be simple, be earnest and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do." |
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Tursiops_G
Technoid
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-06
Norwalk, CT
clubs:
 ·Optimum Online
| ('HAL': "Dave... My Mind is going... I can Feel it.") 
Actually, 'HAL' stands for 'Hardware Abstraction Layer'. It's the Register-Level Interface between the Windows OS and your PC's Physical Hardware (Chipset, CPU, etc.)... Usually, Once the HAL becomes corrupted, the only recourse is to either perform a "Repair Install" of Windows directly from the Windows CD Recovery Console, or else perform a Full Reformat/Reinstall of the Windows OS Partition. 
-Tursiops_G.
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If You're Unsure, "RTFM"... If You're SURE, "RTFM" Anyway.  |
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