Hi all I have major problems and am in desperate need of some help. I am currently running XP Home and my shell32 file has become corrupt, due to this windows will not start up in any mode!! Further problems are, I have a laptop with no floppy and no repair xp installation disk. I have a recovery cd from Toshiba which completely formats and reinstalls to my horror. As far as I can see it, I only need to boot into dos and replace shell32 file, but easier said than done as I cannot boot into dos and have no idea how to replace existing shell32 file if i am lucky enough to get there. Please help, I do not want to reinstall windows for such a small problem there must be a way. Many thanks

Just to say, XP has no DOS. XP does not function by way of DOS like earlier versions of Windows. A corrupted file can be caused by a bad Sector on your harddrive. Watch for help from others.

Hi thanks for your response, unfortunately i managed to corrupt it in an attempt to update icons. There are no bad sectors as I scanned it only last week. Would a dos boot disk help me access c:\ and replace the file?

XP can function with a FAT or NTFS file system. http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... Overview of FAT, HPFS, and NTFS File Systems Normally NTFS is usually used. If your harddrive is NTFS, then it seems to me that any DOS operations would not recognize NTFS.

I have heard that an adaptor an be had for Slaving a Laptop HDD to another computer. If you Slave that HDD to another XP computer, then you may be able to replace that file.