I am looking at a Friends' laptop that won't start. When I boot up, it shows the background image but nothing else. No icons, start menu, etc.. I have tried to run explorer.exe from the task manager but I get an error that says: asdfzxdf run-time error '5' invalid procedure call or argument. I can see explorer.exe in the process tab, but under applications it just shows asdfzxdf. my friend didn't provide any discs that came with this laptop... no os or dell discs. I've tried numerous fixes for similiar problems found while browsing this forum but nothing is working. I did run an antivirus and adaware and found and removed 60 or so problems that they found. Is there any way to replace my explorer file without having an os disk? thanks guys Mreyn

Have you seen respones #5 and #6 on http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/... HTH Bryan

can you boot into safemode if so you can i the run box run sfc /scannow you will need a 2000 disk but I think this is your only answer for the problem as chances are explorer.exe is stuffed and has to reinstalled. by the way any 2000 disk will work as long as it is the same version IE use pro on pro or server on server ect.