Explorer.exe won't start, can't launch anything from Task Manager

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rriley36

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Sep 8, 2013
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10,510
So having a weird problem. Friend's Windows 7 computer turned on this morning (nothing was changed/updated/whatever yesterday) and I could see welcome screen but no desktop, just a black screen and a cursor. Ctrl alt del will show me the Account Locked page where I can select different options to choose, and Task Manager will open if I click it. Looking in my processes tab I can see explorer.exe is not running, and trying to launch it by clicking FIle>New Task just causes task manager to not respond and crash. I can't launch anything, and nothing happens. Safe Mode will not open either, it just sits forever on a blank screen. I saw somewhere that the registry value for launching Explorer could be messed up but I can't open any registry editing program nor the command line. I inserted my installation disc and tried startup repair, system restore, and sfc /scannow and startup repair couldn't find any errors, system restore said successful but it didn't fix anything, and sfc scan just said a system restore pending is preventing a scan (I restarted but still no help). It seems like the only option might be to reinstall windows but we don't have a product key for 7 and 7 was installed over the XP that originally came with that computer, so I can't use the sticker that would've been on the side of the tower. Any help on possibly fixing this issue? To me it seems like explorer.exe might be corrupt. Any suggestions are really appreciated, thanks.
 
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