Upon booting my computer I get past the ME logo and then the blue windows background appears but nothing else gets loaded (no taskbars, no "Start" button, no desktop icons, no programs startup, nothing else past the blue background). No programs appear in the "Applications" tab in the "Windows Task Manager". I've looked for similar postings on the message board and tried them all. I've used the startup disk and ran scandisk and everything came out fine and then even ran scanreg /restore and picked a date to restore to that the had a good configuration and one where I remeber last getting a successful normal boot. It looks like all the necessary files are there but I can't the ME environment to load properly. I look in the bootlog.txt file and looks like all the applications get initiated and loaded then at the end all those programs get uninitiated and stopped. Really don't know what the problem is. Help, anybody know what's going on or have a solution? Is it a virus, a file missing, what? I did notice that after some ME critical updates from the Microsoft site my explorer (on the task manager) kept hanging so I uninstalled my latest applications and updates to try to restore to a previous state and ever since that time, I've been having this boot problem. I've tried almost everything I've seen on the msg boards but to no avail, so I'm almost about to give up and just reinstall. But I don't want to lose all my data. I don't have a CD-RW, but is there a way I can back up my files somewhere else and reinstall ME without losing my data? Thanks for any suggestions you guys may have, I need help badly!

hello can you reboot to safe mode? burn your data to cd-r from safe mode. try reinstalling m.e from safe mode goto c:windows\options\cabs\setup.exe duble click setup windows will install ontop of its self. you are some times asked for m.e serial number. this will allow windows to reinstall windows file with out looseing data. unless you have a virus . you can allso try system restore from dos if safe mode dont work m.e wont start http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/30687.html

You should be able to do a Windows ME restore from the CAB files on the disk drive and lose nothing but all the Windows Updates. As a last resort goto Windows\Options\Install (or Windows\Options\CABS on some machines) and run the SETUP program. You may need your ProductKey.

Thanks wawadave adn JackG for the suggestions. I can't boot to safe mode, I get the same problem, so those options are out. I can only work from the DOS prompt using a boot disk. wawadave, I've read all your suggestions from the link and am down to the last system restore from the dos prompt step. Unfortunately I tried your method of replacing "Progman.exe" in place of "Explorer.exe" in system.ini file. But when I got to the restor function on the GUI Program Manager, it just hung and no further progress. Can I restore the ME from the CAB files as you suggested JackG from the DOS prompt (by booting my machine with the emergency startup disk)?