Restoring explorer.exe on Win XP Home Edition1

[kelvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (More info?)

After a nephew installed and uninstalled God knows what on ome of my
machines, explorer.exe is no where to be found.

The machine starts, logs in users but there is no deskop. I can run all
applications from the cmd line, however. The system restore did not resolve
the problem. I suspect I could run msconfig to fix this, but all of the
documentation on the topic speak of using Start, etc to run the
application.

Where can I locate MSCONFIG on WIN XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2?
Also could I copy this from another machine running XP PRO SP2?

If it makes any difference, this machine was purchased from Dell and
therefore does not have a separate OS disk.

 

[Malke]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (More info?)

Kelvin wrote:

> After a nephew installed and uninstalled God knows what on ome of my
> machines, explorer.exe is no where to be found.
>
> The machine starts, logs in users but there is no deskop. I can run
> all applications from the cmd line, however. The system restore did
> not resolve the problem. I suspect I could run msconfig to fix this,
> but all of the documentation on the topic speak of using Start, etc to
> run the application.
>
> Where can I locate MSCONFIG on WIN XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2?
> Also could I copy this from another machine running XP PRO SP2?
>
> If it makes any difference, this machine was purchased from Dell and
> therefore does not have a separate OS disk.

Since you can at least run programs, I would start with a virus scan. If
you don't have a full-featured av or find it too difficult to navigate
to its executable via commandline, try Sysclean (instructions at
website below). Obviously, you'll need to get this from a working
machine. Copy it to your C: drive so it will be easy to find.

Otherwise, here are various things you can try:

1. Can you run regedit.exe from the commandline? If so, you can navigate
to the Run keys under Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion for
both the Current User and Local Machine.

2. You can go outside the operating system to work on the registry with:

a. Winternals ERD Commander (very expensive)
b. A Bart's PE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

3. You can try copying explorer.exe from a working XP box, but if the
system is infected I don't hold out a lot of hope for that working.

4. From the commandline, you can run the System File Checker:
sfc.exe /scannow [enter]
You are going to need an operating system disk, though. Again, if the
system is infected this isn't going to be useful.

5. Back up any important data and wipe the system, clean-install
Windows. You can back up the data with either method in Item #2 or with
Knoppix, a Linux distro that runs from cd.

Doing any of the above successfully depends on your skill level and your
patience. You may want to take the machine to a qualified computer
professional instead and have your nephew pay for the work (or his
parents if he's really young).

Good luck, and post back if you need more help.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (More info?)

C:\WINDOWS\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries\MSConfig.exe

--
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http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/_comment/001075.html
=================================================
"Kelvin" <idonotlike@spam.com> wrote in message news:JFUVe.32435$%w.5928@twister.nyc.rr.com...
> After a nephew installed and uninstalled God knows what on ome of my
> machines, explorer.exe is no where to be found.
>
> The machine starts, logs in users but there is no deskop. I can run all
> applications from the cmd line, however. The system restore did not resolve
> the problem. I suspect I could run msconfig to fix this, but all of the
> documentation on the topic speak of using Start, etc to run the
> application.
>
> Where can I locate MSCONFIG on WIN XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2?
> Also could I copy this from another machine running XP PRO SP2?
>
> If it makes any difference, this machine was purchased from Dell and
> therefore does not have a separate OS disk.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (More info?)

dir c:\msconfig.exe /s /a

would have found it for you

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/_comment/001075.html
=================================================
"Kelvin" <idonotlike@spam.com> wrote in message news:JFUVe.32435$%w.5928@twister.nyc.rr.com...
> After a nephew installed and uninstalled God knows what on ome of my
> machines, explorer.exe is no where to be found.
>
> The machine starts, logs in users but there is no deskop. I can run all
> applications from the cmd line, however. The system restore did not resolve
> the problem. I suspect I could run msconfig to fix this, but all of the
> documentation on the topic speak of using Start, etc to run the
> application.
>
> Where can I locate MSCONFIG on WIN XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2?
> Also could I copy this from another machine running XP PRO SP2?
>
> If it makes any difference, this machine was purchased from Dell and
> therefore does not have a separate OS disk.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (More info?)

"David Candy" <.> wrote in news:OJdUCITuFHA.2948@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl:

> dir c:\msconfig.exe /s /a
>
> would have found it for you
>

Thanks for all of your help. msconfig and system restore did not work for
me. It appears that there is a limitation to how these utilities can help
when a critical file is deleted. In the end I drummed up the courage and
copied explorer.exe from my XP Pro laptop. So far things are back to
normal.

Next on the agenda is a virus scan.

The command line in windows is not as good as it should be. I would not
have needed to ask this question if it worked like the command line in
Linux.