Explorer Crashing on startup

[Guest_imported]

Yesterday a friend of mine was trying to install Microsoft Works and says he ended up reinstalling windows (win 98).I don't think he actually reinstalled windows, but his system registry was somehow wiped.The computer runs fine, but none of his programs are installed.In an attempt to restore the installation data, I extracted a two day old copy of the registry from one of those backup cab files that windows makes.I ran scanreg and restored the two day old registry.I have done this on my own computer several times and have never had any trouble.This time however, it didn't work.Booting with the old registry, windows boots fine until right before the start menu should appear, and then I get a message that explorer caused IPF or performed some illegal action and will be shut down.Clicking yes leaves me with a blank desktop.The background image is there, and the mouse cursor, but no icons or start menu.The same thing happens when I attempt to boot to safe mode.Reverting back to the clean registry causes the computer to boot fine.

Any ideas?

Aaron

 

[rfeenie]

get your win98 CD out.

 

[Comtech]

Check his HD using Explorer.
I'll bet he's got a Windows folder and a Windows.000 folder.
The windows you're seeing is the one from the .000 folder, and all his programs and such don't work from there. They're all linked to the old one.
If there is NO c:\windows.000 folder, ignore the rest of this post.
Fix:
Boot to safe mode by repeatedly tapping the F8 key on boot up.
Open explorer, browse to the c:\windows folder and rename win.com to win.bak
Go to Start > Run > and run the windows setup again.
This time around MAKE SURE you set windows up to the c:\windows folder, and NOT c:\windows/000 folder.
This will reinstall windows over top of his original configuration, and retain all his settings from there.
Once windows has finished, you can delete the whole c:\windows.000 folder completely.

Jim
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