Hiya, I think I might have something wrong with explorer.exe. My windows XP Pro allows me to login in but then it just goes to the blank background screen and nothing else happens. No icons or start bars would appear, although the mouse and CTRL+ALT+DEL still works. It even goes to the screensaver if you wait long enough. I tried to restart in safe mode but still the computer won't do anything excpet let me login. The only thing that works is Safe Mode with Command Prompt. I tried to do a system restore there by typing %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe but all I get is a useless blank window labelled "System Restore" with a blank icon at the top left hand corner (presumably indicating that it's not working". My previous reboot was pretty normal. The only thing I can think of is I updated Spybot and AVG, and also I ran a Spybot scan which came up with no problems. Please help! Elisabeth

Also when in Task Manager I can see that explorer.exe is NOT there, and when I try to run it it won't let me. I can access some other programs but not explorer.exe!!

Can anyone help me get explorer to work? thanks, Elisabeth

I'm assumimg explorer.exe is corrupted or missing. In Safe Mode command prompt.... type: cd\ (Enter) type: dir /s explorer.exe (Enter) There is normally explorer.exe in C:\Windows, and in C:\Windows\System32\dllcache of the exactly the same file time, date, and size. If there are two of the same in those locations, if you want to figure out whether they are both legitimate, see the last step below. .... If both of them are missing, you need to copy explorer.exe from an XP installation that is the same version as yours from one of those locations onto a floppy disk, then use Safe Mode command prompt and copy explorer.exe to both of those locations. insert the floppy disk In Safe Mode command prompt, type: a: (Enter) type: copy explorer.exe C:\Windows (Enter) type: copy explorer.exe C:\Windows\System32\dllcache (Enter) If one of them is missing, or one of them is a bogus file, copy explorer.exe to the other location. In Safe Mode command prompt type: c: (Enter) type: cd\ (Enter) type: copy C:\Windows\explorer.exe C:\Windows\System32\dllcache (Enter) or type: copy C:\Windows\System32\dllcache\explorer.exe C:\Windows (Enter) .... If there is explorer.exe in those two locations but they are not the same size, at least one has been modified or been replaced by some malware. To figure out which one might be legitimate type: c: (Enter) type: cd\ (Enter) type: dir /as ntldr (Enter) The file time and date should be the same as the legitimate explorer.exe

Thanks for the response. I have explorer.exe in both locations and they have the same time and date and size. The date and time is 18/08/2001 10:00. However I did the dir /as ntdlr check and the time here is 30/10/2004 04:02. I seem to remember that the created and modified times of explorer.exe are different, and that the created time is later than the modified one. Also I tried to rename explorer.exe to explorer2.exe and used create new task in task manager to run it. It actually came on to the "processes" panel for one second before coming off. Before I renamed it it wouldn't even register on the panel when I opened or ran it. Any more ideas? I tried system restore too but for some reason my computer won't let me do it.

"Thanks for the response. I have explorer.exe in both locations and they have the same time and date and size. The date and time is 18/08/2001 10:00. However I did the dir /as ntdlr check and the time here is 30/10/2004 04:02. I seem to remember that the created and modified times of explorer.exe are different" Safe Mode only shows you one time and date of the two of created or modified, I'm not certain which. I have only one working hard drive with XP Pro on it at the moment, an older version - on that one ntldr has the same time and date as the two explorer.exe's. You could try type: c: type: cd\ type: dir /as or type: dir /as /s that shows you only system files - some of them should have the same time and date as the explorer.exe's if they are legitimate. You could try replacing both explorer.exe's with those from another computer that has the same version of Windows but it may not help. The problem may be more complicated than I thought - something else is interfering with explorer.exe working properly. The only thing that comes to mind is I had a problem on somone's computer where explorer.exe would not load because she had loaded ATI drivers and applications in the wrong order when attempting to update the ATI drivers, but lots of things can cause explorer not to load. First make sure your hard drive is okay. If it isn't you will need to rescue what you can off of it, and replace it. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/...

type: dir /as /s is useless - shows too many files, most are newer. dir /as /s /p is useless too (shows a page at a time). type: c: type: cd\windows (these files have the original windows date that many files have, the same as the two explorer.exe's in my case) type: dir _default.pif type: dir msdfmap.ini type: dir explorer.scf type: dir twain*.dll (two files) type: dir twunk*.exe (two files)