Windows XP Problem need a little help

It sounds like explorer.exe has crashed (Don't confuse this with Internet Explorer, which is iexplore.exe.)

Explorer.exe includes your My Computer, Windows Explorer, and taskbar.

If this is what is wrong, rebooting should solve the problem.

If you already rebooted and it didn't fix the problem, then ignore everything else I'm about to say because it means I'm wrong about what the problem is.

If you don't want to reboot for some reason, you can bring up task manager and kill the explorer.exe process, and then restart it. It's pretty harmless; it will kill your My Computer and Windows Explorer windows, but browsers and other programs you're running will stay as they are.

1. Bring up task manager by pressing ctrl + alt + delete and clicking the Task Manager button
2. View the Processes tab. Find explorer.exe in the list, select it, and click the End Process button. You will see your task bar go away.
3. Choose File > New Task (Run) from the task manager menu.
4. Enter c:\ in the Open box and click OK. The taskbar will come back and should be normal.

Patey88

Thanks for all the help but it not working so going to re format the laptop

Cheers Jason

From what you are saying I would do an over the top reinstall, not a complete format .

Yeah, Kim is right! Try a normal IN PLACE reinstall. If THAT fails, install to a new directory, and install everything else. Assuming that the problem ISN'T explorer.

BTW, Patey88 was right, it DOES sound like an explorer problem. 9 times out of ten, it is non responsive and/or shows almost nothing on the bar, or no bar at all. And killing it and restarting, like he said, DOES usually help. I would STILL try to reboot if you haven't done it yet. You may ALSO want to restart without loading startup items.

If it STILL doesn't work, then some DLL or something is bad or missing. An inplace install CAN help, and is PAINLESS. Otherwise, installing in another directory should work FINE, but most things will need to be REINSTALLED.

A formet and reinstall is almost CERTAIN to be overkill, and is PAINFUL! So it is a LAST RESORT!

Steve

Thanks for the Information , I have gone back to factory default , I was lucky as this is the one I do my videos on and not the main Laptop ( that one has a password to access It ) but it was a royal pain but now it is fixed

It may had something to do with the Windows update last night but she does swear that nothing was touched :rolleyes:

So to seasoned , Kim W & patey88 Thanks once again

Jason