XP Home Boots to Welcome screen, then nothing... help plz...

[buRford]

OK... here's the story... WinXP Home ed... standalone desktop.
I was just beginning an installation of Norton Antivirus.
After a couple of seconds, the computer just rebooted by itself... for no apparent reason.
When it restarted, it just hung at the welcome screen.
When I did a ctrl-alt-del, the desktop wallpaper would appear, as would task mgr... but
nothing else... no icons, taskbar, systray, etc. Just the wallpaper & my cursor, which
functioned (moves & works with task mgr).
I tried adding the new task *explorer*... but nothing happened.
Nothing in the applications field... about 10 running processes... the network field said
something like *no network adaptors present.*

Rebooted a couple of times (turning off the computer).
Tried rebooting into safe mode (as admin). Same thing.
I'm tried rebooting to *last good config.* Same thing.
I'm kind of new to XP, and wasn't sure how to do a system restore.
Eventually, through task mgr, I opened msconfig, and clicked the *system restore* button.
Still nothing.

I inserted my XP Home cd, and tried to do a recovery... clicked *R*... it asked for an
administration password, which I never gave it during install.
I clicked enter & got to the c:\Windows prompt... but from there, I'm clueless.
I know I can do a total re-format, etc... but would like to try to save my install
first... if possible.
Any suggestions??

If I have to reformat, I'd like to save some files before reformatting.
I tried installing the HD on my old win98SE system, but of course the computer couldn't
see the NTFS XP installation. So I'm not sure how to access the HD, if I have to do a
reinstall. I know about NTFS for Windows 98, but don't know how to get the XP files I
need (NTFS.sys, etc) onto my win98 installation (different computer).
Any ideas??

I appreciate any help anybody can offer... Thanks!!!

 

[neil]

Read this to carry out a repair install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
When you have task manager running does it show explorer.exe as a process.
If it does try ending the process (select and click end process) then "run"
explorer.exe again, but don't close task manager in between.

Neil

 

[buRford]

Read this to carry out a repair install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
When you have task manager running does it show explorer.exe as a process.
If it does try ending the process (select and click end process) then "run"
explorer.exe again, but don't close task manager in between.

Neil

Explorer doesn't show as a process, even after I run it.
I'm going to try doing what one of the links on your link (above) suggests.
I'll let ya know how it goes.
Thanks, Neil. Very much appreciated!!!

 

[buRford]

Read this to carry out a repair install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
When you have task manager running does it show explorer.exe as a process.
If it does try ending the process (select and click end process) then "run"
explorer.exe again, but don't close task manager in between.

I was able to get back into XP, using one of the methods from your link.
Unfortunately, the restore point before my crash, was basically empty.
So I wasn't able to restore my registry.
But, I was able to backup all my important files. Thanks for that!!

Now, it wants me to activate again, and when I try, it keeps giving me a can't activate.
So I'll probably do a total reformat.

One question... how can one increase the number of restore points?
It looked like I had two... and one was the corrupt one, and one from after the crash.
Also, since I'm kind of new to XP, where exactly is the registry backups?
Are they all in the system volume info file??

I knew how to backup & restore corrupt registries in win98/95, but got lots to learn about
XP... so I don't have to go through this again after a crash.

 

[neil]

This may help
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;322756#4
then go to restore the registry.

It may be the restore points became corrupted so you only ended up with two.
Or have you recently installed SP2 in which case I think all previous points
before SP2 are useless anyway.
With the settings for system restore set to default the system will be
backed up every two or three days automatically.
As to why you cannot "activate" you may have to ask MS by phone, I think
it's quite easy.

all the best
Neil

 

[buRford]

Thanks for all your help, Neil.
I'll check this out.