proby340 said:
my explorer.exe stops responding every time i attempt to login to my
account.
My account is the only account on the computer. Right now i am in safe
mode
with networking and it is working fine. Any advice on how to fix without
formatting? I have attempted to replace explorer.exe with a different one
i copied from my laptop, but for some reason i do not have access to
delete the old file....thanks in advance.
Since you can get into Safe Mode, something running in Regular Mode is
causing the issue. It could be malware or a legitimate
process/program/driver. You need to find out what is causing the issue so
start troubleshooting by doing a clean boot.
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista -
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;929135
The free Autoruns program is very useful for managing your Startup -
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
After you've done the clean boot, post back with the results if you need
more help.
Before you do the clean boot and while you are in Safe Mode, the first thing
you should do is secure your data. By this I mean if you haven't backed up
important files to external media like a USB thumb drive or an external
hard drive, do this now.
Also in Safe Mode, create a second user account. Here's why and what to do:
You absolutely do not want to have only one user account. Like XP and all
other modern operating systems, Vista is a multi-user operating system with
built-in system accounts such as Administrator, Default, All Users, and
Guest. These accounts should be left alone as they are part of the
operating system structure.
You particularly don't want only one user account with administrative
privileges on Vista because the built-in Administrator account (normally
only used in emergencies) is disabled by default. If you're running as
Administrator for your daily work and that account gets corrupted, things
will be Difficult. It isn't impossible to activate the built-in
Administrator to rescue things, but it will require third-party tools and
working outside the operating system.
The user account that is for your daily work should be a Standard user, with
the extra administrative user (call it something like "CompAdmin" or "Tech"
or the like) only there for elevation purposes. After you create
"CompAdmin", log into it and change your regular user account to Standard.
Then log back into your regular account.
If you want to go directly to the Desktop and skip the Welcome Screen with
the icons of user accounts, you can do this the same way as in XP:
Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm
Malke
