WinXP Home - My Documents/My Computer/IE Not Launching/Running

[Thomas Jackson]

Hello everyone
I'm trying to help out a friend in need with his WinXP problems, I myself am
a Windows 2000 user, and before that a long time Win95/98/NT user so there
are a _few_ differences between those OS's and XP that i'm not familiar
with, however I dont know if they are to 'blame' for some of the problems
we've been having

He's on a modem AOL connection which makes it hard to update with patches,
so I've been downloading the service packs etc from the Microsoft V4 Update
Catalogue site...

Anyways onto the symptoms. His computer will boot, and has been confirmed
with Norton Systemworks 2004 Pro and the latest libraries to have no
viruses. It has also been confirmed with Ad-Aware Pro Build 181 and the
latest ref file to have no spyware. I've checked the registry Run directory
to see if anything is hiding, no dice. However going to Start-> My
Computer/My Documents all result in momentary hourglass cursors followed by
a lack of 'new windows' The only way i've gotten him access to his files is
through making a shortcut on his desktop to explorer.exe. He is also having
frequent explorer.exe crashes. To make matters worse, Internet Explorer,
iexplore.exe will NOT run at all. Any attempts at windows updating from his
site through the modem connection have only partially suceeded through AOL's
browser. Windows Update failed, as the scripts/possible current state of the
machine/AOL browser didn't fully return a scan.

I have run Norton Utilities to check the OS for errors. and the One button
checkup also came up clean aside from some minor activex problems. I haven't
blown away all his activex libraries yet, but i dont think that could be the
cause of everything at the moment.

I have NOT gotten anything similar to the Delphi errors that were mentioned
on this newsgroup before. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with
these symptoms and can recommend a course of action, aside from buying WinXp
Pro and installing from scratch.

Thanks in advance,
Tom Jackson
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Malke]

Hello everyone
I'm trying to help out a friend in need with his WinXP problems, I
myself am a Windows 2000 user, and before that a long time Win95/98/NT
user so there are a _few_ differences between those OS's and XP that
i'm not familiar with, however I dont know if they are to 'blame' for
some of the problems we've been having

He's on a modem AOL connection which makes it hard to update with
patches, so I've been downloading the service packs etc from the
Microsoft V4 Update Catalogue site...

Anyways onto the symptoms. His computer will boot, and has been
confirmed with Norton Systemworks 2004 Pro and the latest libraries to
have no viruses. It has also been confirmed with Ad-Aware Pro Build
181 and the latest ref file to have no spyware. I've checked the
registry Run directory to see if anything is hiding, no dice. However
going to Start-> My Computer/My Documents all result in momentary
hourglass cursors followed by a lack of 'new windows' The only way
i've gotten him access to his files is through making a shortcut on
his desktop to explorer.exe. He is also having frequent explorer.exe
crashes. To make matters worse, Internet Explorer, iexplore.exe will
NOT run at all. Any attempts at windows updating from his site through
the modem connection have only partially suceeded through AOL's
browser. Windows Update failed, as the scripts/possible current state
of the machine/AOL browser didn't fully return a scan.

I have run Norton Utilities to check the OS for errors. and the One
button checkup also came up clean aside from some minor activex
problems. I haven't blown away all his activex libraries yet, but i
dont think that could be the cause of everything at the moment.

I have NOT gotten anything similar to the Delphi errors that were
mentioned on this newsgroup before. I'm wondering if anyone has any
experience with these symptoms and can recommend a course of action,
aside from buying WinXp Pro and installing from scratch.

Thanks for the nicely detailed post. Since you've pretty well covered
the software basics (aside from asking what changed between the time
things worked and the time they didn't, but often the end user won't
know or it won't be apparent), I'd look to hardware failures. I also
start by testing RAM with Memtest86 (www.memtest86.com). Let the test
run for a long time, like overnight. If the RAM is good, then test the
hard drive with a diagnostic utility from the mftr. Post back if you
need more information about how to do this hardware testing.

Malke