Explorer / Desktop fails to run for User account login

[Guest]

I've mangled something in my main XP system, and I'm not sure what or how,
but when logging in with a user account, all I get is a "clear" screen, no
desktop, no taskbar, no icons. However, I can run task manager and start any
number of programs from that perfectly well, but explorer itself (or things
related like C:\) simply refuse to run when I try with "New Task...".
Logging in as an administrator account, everything is just fine. Whilst the
computer is on a domain, both local and domain accounts show the same
behaviour.
As System Restore to the earliest checkpoint made no difference.

Just before this happened, I was struggling with VB6 which has a mind of its
own in that it sometimes failes to load a project with "access denied" and a
lot of other things. This is usually cured by running it as administrator,
then as user. Something in the registry must get "reset". I was having a look
at HKCR\Licences as this seems to be the area involved, and added, then
remove a read permission to HKCR, to see if it would help. It made matters
very much worse. VB6 now fails to load lots of other things and the wierd
user login symptoms appeared.

I have checked with my laptop (which runs a very similar configuration for
VB) and the HKCR tree looks the same for permissions, so I don't know what I
messed up, if it was around there at all.

I tried regmon and filemon to see if anything was denied, but only a couple
of (seemingly) inconsequential registry keys were denied. They were early
enough on that it seemed unlikely they were prime reason for exit. Filemon
shows explorer going around the system and user environments; it looked
reasonable, but then everything just gets close and explorer exits.

Anyone have any ideas on where to look, as this is a critical project
computer (aren't they all) and the prospect of reinstalling does NOT appeal,
due to the large number of programs installed. As ever, the backup is ancient
because all data is stored on the server. I have alternatives in the
meanwhile, but less than convient.

Anyone have any ideas... please?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Gosh I have seen that before but can't remember all the exact reasons.
Anyhow look in the application/system logs to see if anything is recorded
there and make sure that users have needed permissions to the root/drive
folder, \windows folders and subfolders, documents and settings folders,
their user profile folder, the userinit.exe file, and of course
explorer.exe. Typically users group would have read/list/execute permissions
and full control to their user profile. You could also use the secedit
command to reset security settings back to default defined levels as
explained in the link below and you can use /areas to specify specific areas
if you do not want to do them all. I believe a reboot may be needed after
the command is done to test a problem users access. PS don't try using that
command on a Windows 2003 Server ever due to a problem with Windows 2003
default/repair security templates for services. --- Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;313222

 

[Guest]

Good to know I'm not the only twit then...

Gosh I have seen that before but can't remember all the exact reasons.
Anyhow look in the application/system logs to see if anything is recorded
there and make sure that users have needed permissions to the root/drive .......

I'll have a look, but the one thing I didn't change is any file / folder
security permissions, but I will check.
I know this because, when "logged in" as a user account (and they are all
affected on this machine), I can use task manager to browse to and run almost
every program I use on a day to day basis. My text editors, revision control,
word processing, picture editing ---- the lot. These all access files
normally and show no signs of distress (unlike me!). The only ones which give
difficulty are Outlook which displays only the folder tree pane, and internet
explorer / explorer itself which fails to run for more than a couple of
milliseconds.

So I am left with a very "DOS - unix" system, where everything can be run
from the command line except the primary user interface.

That doesn't sound like file permissions being a problem. I am left still
considering that VB6 has truly screwed around with my registry for one time
too many and made a hash of it at some random place, but I have no idea where?

I tried a System Restore to the "yesterday" point, and that did nothing; I
did it again to the oldest entry in the table (some 2 weeks ago) and the
restore said "nothing has changed". So, does that rule out registry? -
perhaps not.

I can certainly browse the whole file / folder tree and am not denied read
of anything, and I can see everything in the registry with regedit similarly.

The "Desktop" can be browsed but "My Computer" and "My Network Places" show
as just "Folder" although I can browse into them and see the network places
shortcuts; other desktop folders are visible in the browse too.

I can navigate to "system32" and run programs from there, such as cmd.exe
and notepad.exe, so nothing radical there either.

Looking in the system event log, the following error entries seem to have
appeared since around the time VB6 was play acting and I was trying to fix it
(for the zillionth time). The link to Microsoft just says there is nothing to
say - not very helpful.

The server {0C0A3666-30C9-11D0-8F20-00805F2CD064} did not register with DCOM
within the required timeout.
The server {8EC217F4-3428-4881-8019-AA8A19C2F07F} did not register with DCOM
within the required timeout.
The server {A1F4E726-8CF1-11D1-BF92-0060081ED811} did not register with DCOM
within the required timeout.
The server {D5B7FCA3-3040-11D1-92BA-444553540000} did not register with DCOM
within the required timeout.

Unable to start a DCOM Server: {8EC217F4-3428-4881-8019-AA8A19C2F07F}. The
error:
"The system cannot find the file specified. "
Happened while starting this command:
.......< some Unicode garbage occurs here > ......


I guess there are two ways to approach this; I could try a "repair" of the
registry to see if that helps. I will also prepare an alternate disc with the
last saved image. That was a year ago, but that is not as bad as it sounds.
Some programs have been added since then, but this machine doesn't change
often and all data is kept on an independent disc and on the server. Working
it up to usable is some effort, but not as much as a full, clean install -
that took 2 months to get right.

I'm over most of the screaming & crying now, so any ideas on how else to
progress?

 

[Guest]

Oh JOY, JOY... (weeps for a couple of minutes in sheer relief).

I ran a secedit to repair just the regkeys area; after all, there is nothing
to lose now, and that seemed the simplest step.

When it had finished, the whole session locked up completely, so I had to do
a power-plug reset.

When it had rebooted, I can now log in both as administrator and as user
accounts, and my main desktop is all there, fully active.

I kept a log of the secedit run, but frustratingly, it just lists the areas
it covered, but not what keys it had to reset, so I guess we will never know.
The event log still shows a "not registered within timeout" for
{8EC21F74......} but only that; the others do not occur, so perhaps the clue
is in them.

Thanks for being there...

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Well that is good news that it works correctly now but too bad the log did
not show more detail on what was changed but I believe the log usually shows
just what was applied. I don't know if you have seen the link below or not
but you supposedly can configure regmon to capture the whole startup/logon
process though I have not tried it myself. More than a few times I have
given up trying to track down a problem's details and was just glad that I
was able to repair it without a lot of grief. You might want to start using
some image software like Ghost to backup your computer periodically so that
is can easily be restored in the future or at the very least backing up the
System State or registry. --- Steve

http://www.sysinternals.com/Information/BootTimeRegistryActivity.html

 

[Guest]

Your reminder is most humbly accepted. I do use imaging software and have any
number of test images that regularly get placed on discs, but the main
development machines get less attention than they should. That will be
remedied, at least for now..

Thanks for the link about regmon, that will be very useful indeed, but as
you say, the relief of a solution is often enough to forget the pain - a bit
like pregnancy I guess!

Thanks again for being there and the solution.

 

[Guest]

I had the same problem. I got mine to run by going to the command box and
typing in "chkdsk." It not only checked the disk, but it deleted a bunch of
corrupt files. As far as I can tell, everything I need is still there.

Robin