No explorer or Command... well, nothing

tobster911

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Feb 11, 2012
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So. A desktop running XP Professional Edition. Was running very slow and infested with viruses. When I turned it on, I got a blue screen with a COMCTL32.dll error (just after the windows logo has disappeared). I have managed to replace this DLL file and now I get past the error, however, the desktop will not load. I believe it's because explorer.exe is not loading. I can still move the mouse cursor, and the keyboard comes alive, but can't do anything with it. Not Windows + R nor Ctrl Alt Del.

I then tried booting just into Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Again, it loads the black background with the safe mode text, but no user log in screen appears (It should because it's password protected), and no command window opens.

Really not sure what to do now. I get no error messages or anything, just a blue screen (standard XP blue colour) when booting 'normally', and black when in safe mode, but can still move mouse.

Any help greatly appreciated... Thank you

EDIT:
It might not be explorer, it might be the login service(?) or something, considering the fact that no login page appears.

Thanks again

T
 

jbrown156

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how about you just format the computer ??? wouldnt that solve your issue with ease .. i would suggest anyway that you get a more modern version of windows like windows 7 that has more security updates and are less prone to viruses .. you can just purchase a legal copy of windows and do a reinstall
 

jbrown156

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i did not suggest the task manager method because he said the ctrl+alt+del didnt work for him ..
if the taskmanager works then click >>file >>new task >>browse >>navigate to system 32 and open explorer.exe
 

Skippy27

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Can it be booted into Safe Mode or off of a boot CD/USB drive?

If you can access the drive in either of those ways, which I assume you can being you replaced that file, I would then go through the drive and clean out the temp folders (user profiles and windows). I would then go through ProgramData and the root of the profiles looking for any suspicious files/folders to remove. I would then open the registry of the machine and then go through the run keys and services to identify anything running that should not be. Note their location and if it is not in one of the previously mentioned places go there and get rid of the files.

Or to avoid all that manual labor try get a boot drive that has some kind of good cleaning tool you can run on a "remote" machine like that.
If you can get in by safe mode try using Combofix from bleepingcomputer.
 

tobster911

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Thanks everyone. I am unable to access task manager or any programs, and booting into safemode just leaves me with a blank screen. I can boot with a CD and USB drive. I booted into XP disc to re-install Windows, but it finds a partition on the hard drive saying it is totally unused. But, it quite clearly isn't.

Argh, I hate I.T