Explorer won't start.

[Parish]

XP+SP1

When Windows starts the Explorer shell fails to load. All I get is a
blank desktop - no taskbar, no icons, and no desktop context menu.

This happens for the normal user (Classic desktop) and Administrator (XP
theme desktop), both Normal mode and Safe Mode.

Ctrl-Alt-Del brings up Task Manager and I can run any app from New Task
except Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Control Panel (although the CP
applets, e.g. AppWiz.cpl, run).

After searching Google Groups I've done the following, rebooting after
each to see if the problem was fixed:

Ran Ramesh's ToolBarCop and disabled everything it found.
Did an In Place Upgrade of XP+SP1 (the CD is XP+SP1)
Installed SP2
Installed and ran the latest versions of the following, deleting
everything they found and re-running them to make sure they found
nothing else:
AdAware
SpyBot Search and Destroy
Windows Malicious Software Tool

I read that Google Desktop Search has been known to mess up Explorer so
I removed that and the Google and Yahoo! toolbars - plus manually
removed the dross they left behind in the registry.

I also installed Firefox and made it the default browser - long shot I
know, but I figured that by making IE not the default browser it may
just help.

One other thing, the Internet connection doesn't work. It's a DSL
connection via a SpeedTouch USB modem.

Any suggestions as to where to go from here, or what the possible cause
is? I'm guessing it's some scumware installed by a website but, since
the three scumware tools I've run don't find anything it could be that
it failed to install properly, or is just buggy.

TIA

Regards,

Parish

 

[Guest]

XP Home + SP2
The same thing has happened to me, Explorer just freezes after signing on
and everytime I run it after terminating the process.
On a troubleshoot message board I found said to insert the Windows
installation disk andn expand explorer onto the hard drive through the
command prompt, but this did not fix the problem at all.
I have also run Adaware and Spybot, but nothing turns up.

Ben

 

[robthill]

XP Home + SP2
The same thing has happened to me, Explorer just freezes after signing on
and everytime I run it after terminating the process.
On a troubleshoot message board I found said to insert the Windows
installation disk andn expand explorer onto the hard drive through the
command prompt, but this did not fix the problem at all.
I have also run Adaware and Spybot, but nothing turns up.

Ben

I am getting a similar problem. My computer is now a bit of a mix of
professional build and home alterations. It has an AMD Athlon CPU
(1.6G, I think) and two hard drives. It originally ran XP Pro with SP2
and a DSL connection to the internet.

Now I have the two hard drives one with C: and D:, the other spare and
free. I did a repair from the CD with SP1 and I now have it booting
through C: and the Windows XP on D:. This must be because at one stage
it was dual boot.

It starts normally but hangs at the windows background. I can start
task manager but when I run explorer.exe I see a flicker of the start
menu and task bar. It shows explorer running in the process window and
then it disappears. It is the same whatever mode I start in. I have
also tried running sfc/SCANNOW and userinit with the same result. I do
have SP2 which I have not loaded, although it was installed previously.

I feel I am so close to getting it working as I can see all the files
when I browse trough task manager that I really don't want to do a
clean install if I don't have to.

Bob

 

[onedrum]

Has this problem been solved? This is the closest description I've
found to the problem I've been dealing with for the past week, and it
would make my day to get to the bottom of it!

 

[Plato]

Has this problem been solved? This is the closest description I've
found to the problem I've been dealing with for the past week, and it
would make my day to get to the bottom of it!

What problem? No quoting makes it hard to follow. With nothing else to
go on. Oten, Explorer problems are due to bad/mismatched ram.

 

[onedrum]

Sorry, this is the problem I was talking about:


"XP+SP1

When Windows starts the Explorer shell fails to load. All I get is a
blank desktop - no taskbar, no icons, and no desktop context menu.

This happens for the normal user (Classic desktop) and Administrator
(XP
theme desktop), both Normal mode and Safe Mode.

Ctrl-Alt-Del brings up Task Manager and I can run any app from New Task

except Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Control Panel (although the CP
applets, e.g. AppWiz.cpl, run). "


I've run AVG, Spybot, Adaware, CCleaner, Ewido, HiJack This, and
various other tools, and though the PC was spyware/virus-infected
before, it doesn't seem to be the case now. Also, it gives me a blank
desktop in diagnostic mode, safe mode, and normal mode, and in a newly
created user as well. I've run into the "no icons, no taskbar" problem
before, but this one sure seems to take the cake! Any ideas would be
greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Plato]

Sorry, this is the problem I was talking about:

Again, explorer is a great, built in ram tester.

 

[onedrum]

Swapped RAM, same problem...any suggestions?

Again, explorer is a great, built in ram tester.

 

[Barney]

I have the same problem ... any suggestions ?

onedrum a écrit :

 

[Kisho.Jigoku]

I just got my new laptop with Home XP SP2 and it was working fine until
I ran the windows updater. It installed a installer and rebooted my
notebook and when it logged into my name Explorer wasn't loading (no
bars or icons). I don't have any trouble running programs through Task
Manager's New Task option and when I load my notebook in safe mode it
seems to work fine. I got a freakin' error for updating a computer I
had for less then an hour! @_@