I've been given this one as a last attempt to fix it. The owner had some spyware problems & used the sledgehammer approach to fix it. Ends up that in normal or safe mode he gets the error 'explorer.exe failed to initialize properly 0xc0000022. etc. Clicking ok just gets the blank desktop, cursor & nothing else. Cannot do a system restore - error message appears before the safe mode option. Tried running sfc from within Task Manager - screen just flashes for a moment & nothing else. Tried system restore from safe mode command prompt & again, nothing happens. Being MediaCentre there are no restore disks and he hadn't got around to creating a recovery disk. Any suggestions as to the next step please? "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

a number of possible solutions here. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...

Thanks for that, yes, I'd already done a 'super-google', but most of the solutions seemed to rely on being able to log on as administrator & run windows fixes, but I've only got the option of using task manager which doesn't appear to let me do anything useful. "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

Don't know if this will work but go to bootdisk.com and down load the 6 xp boot disks then try this.But then, it probably doesn't have a floppy drive.There is a way to run this from a linux or other boot disk barts pe. I think this article addresses that. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

Thanks per, that's a good one to try, bit late tonight but I'll give it a go tomorrow & let you know how it went. "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

Please if you fix the problem let me know how I've never had this problem but I want to be ready when i get it. this helps you create a Windows LiveCD easily http://www.ubcd4win.com/

Hi, went all through the M$ fix & still no joy - parts actually made it worse so had to undo them. At the moment I'm trying to get hold of a Media Centre restore disk (seem very rare) so I can try a repair install. Will keep trying any other suggestions in the meantime though. "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."