Power Outage Problem

[jcage]

We recently had a series of rapid power bumps and following one
incident where the power came back, a computer on our home network
won't fully boot. It's Windows XP Home and comes up to the desktop
background image that was there but no icons on the screen. Mouse
cursor moves fine too but when you do a Ctrl-Alt-Del all processes are
there EXCEPT explorer.exe

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Tia,
John

 

[Rob]

What happens if you use Task Manager to start explorer.exe manually
(File, New task, type 'explorer.exe')?
Also have a look at the Event Viewer in Administrative Tools for any clues.

HTH,

 

[VanguardLH]

We recently had a series of rapid power bumps and following one
incident where the power came back, a computer on our home network
won't fully boot. It's Windows XP Home and comes up to the desktop
background image that was there but no icons on the screen. Mouse
cursor moves fine too but when you do a Ctrl-Alt-Del all processes are
there EXCEPT explorer.exe

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Tia,
John

Reboot and go into the boot menu (hit the F8 key when Windows first
starts) and select "Last known good configuration".

 

[jcage]

Reboot and go into the boot menu (hit the F8 key when Windows first
starts) and select "Last known good configuration".

No good. The last known registry must be corrupt too.

 

[jcage]

What happens if you use Task Manager to start explorer.exe manually
(File, New task, type 'explorer.exe')? Also have a look at the Event Viewer in Administrative Tools for any clues.

HTH,

Not familiar enough probably with Admin tools to know what I'm looking
for. As I did the FILE, NEW TASK, BROWSE and found explorer though,
it came back with an error that Windows cannot find the file (even
though I highlighted explorer).

Next I copied that file to the root directory and renamed what
appeared only as 'explorer' to explorer.exe and it ran as
explorer.exe.exe with the my computer folders opening, etc. I have a
virus scanner running on it now. Not sure what's up. The
explorer.exe file looks fine and the size is appropriate - all
properties appear normal - it just won't run as explorer.exe and I'm
kind of where I was with only the .jpg image on the windows desktop
with no icons, etc.

 

[VanguardLH]

We recently had a series of rapid power bumps and following one
incident where the power came back, a computer on our home network
won't fully boot. It's Windows XP Home and comes up to the desktop
background image that was there but no icons on the screen. Mouse
cursor moves fine too but when you do a Ctrl-Alt-Del all processes are
there EXCEPT explorer.exe

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Tia,
John

Sounds like your account has a corrupt profile. Boot Windows and login
under the Administrator account instead of your own account (the
Administrator account should *never* be used for everyday use but kept
unused for only emergencies). Create a new Windows account. You can
then start copying Start menu shortcuts and other items under the old
profile to the new profile (making sure to change permissions as
appropriate).

If you can't even get the desktop on logging under the Administrator
account, you may get stuck having to do a repair install of Windows.
You will need the installation CD for the version of Windows that is
currently installed on the problematic host.

 

[jcage]

Sounds like your account has a corrupt profile.  Boot Windows and login
under the Administrator account instead of your own account (the
Administrator account should *never* be used for everyday use but kept
unused for only emergencies).  Create a new Windows account.  You can
then start copying Start menu shortcuts and other items under the old
profile to the new profile (making sure to change permissions as
appropriate).

If you can't even get the desktop on logging under the Administrator
account, you may get stuck having to do a repair install of Windows.
You will need the installation CD for the version of Windows that is
currently installed on the problematic host.

I went through task manager and ran regedit then dumped this key from
the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image
File Execution Options\explorer.exe

And then rebooted the machine and VOILA... I'm back in business...
Thanks very much to both you guys for your replies... Just wanted to
weigh back in here with what got me going again.

John

 

[VanguardLH]

I went through task manager and ran regedit then dumped this key from
the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image
File Execution Options\explorer.exe

And then rebooted the machine and VOILA... I'm back in business...
Thanks very much to both you guys for your replies... Just wanted to
weigh back in here with what got me going again.

http://blogs.msdn.com/greggm/archive/2005/02/21/377663.aspx
http://www.osix.net/modules/article/?id=781

Since this entry provides an override of the executable, it would have
been interesting to know what data items were under this registry key
before you deleted it (which, I assume, is what you meant by "dumped").
Whatever was specified there would run *instead* of the regular
explorer.exe file. Because of this, you might want to scan your host
using several anti-virus and anti-malware programs to ensure some
malicious program didn't try to replace the correct GUI handler
(explorer.exe is not just Windows Explorer but also the handler to
display the Windows desktop).