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What Happened to Explorer?!

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4 replies

by abgarza3809

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Right. OK, I had a severe infection on my PC (virus and spy ware). Bad on me for not keeping myself up-to-date. I have removed the viruses and spy ware, or so I believe, on the system. The system is my home system used for gaming and surfing the web. sometime after the fiasco, about two or three days( I had been using my console for gaming as so had the machine shut down) I logged on to the machine and low and behold.. Windows Explorer would not load. I had my background and the full use of the task manager, but no explorer. I had to start an instance of explorer using the task manager. Has anyone seen this? Have I damaged my login process by deleting some of the infected files? Any assistance to correct the issue would be greatly appreciated.

4 replies

by thechas

For Windows XP, give this a try:

Insert your Windows CD in the CD drive.

Exit from the program that opens.

In the run box on the start menu, type in SFC
Press enter / okay

Re-boot your PC.

XP will run System File Checker.
This will replace missing or corrupt Windows System files.

Chas

by blackcurrant

Hi

I had exactly the same problem. I had just run AdAware which cleaned out some SpyWare and after rebooting my background was there, but no icons or Task Bar.

Did you get an error message? Mine displayed the error: Explorer.exe unable to load, file UxTheme.dll missing/corrupted. I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up Task Manager, then clicked on File>New Task (Run) then clicked the Browse button. I opened the I386 folder, right clicked the UxTheme.dll file, selected Copy to folder, and copied it to C:\Windows. Hey presto everything worked.

Hope this helps

by abgarza3809

Thanks this helped (sorry for the long reply time) copying the file allowed for windows explorer to load. Unfortunately several other major files were damaged. I do not recommend the bullet proof software suite. In my over zealous attempt to rid my computer of all spy ware and adware the program also allowed me to delete files that controlled major system processes, including NAV (Norton Antivirus), NIS(Norton Internet Security), and a multitude of other programs. Sadly the only fix for these was a system rebuild. Alas, but thank you for your time.

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