Explorer not appearing at boot time..

[popeydotcom]

Packard Bell PC

98Mb/6Gb/PII300/Win98

Symptom of problems. PC boots all the way into windows, however explorer appears to start (the tray appears very briefly) but that's it. The desktop background appears, but no desktop icons, no start menu, and no bar. The only thing that is running (CTRL+ALT+DELETE) is nprotect and rnaapp. It won't boot to safe mode (same problem). If I do an ALT+TAB after booted I do see a small blue box (application) which doesn't respond to anything other than being moved by the mouse. Windows key doesn't work, ALT+SPACE does nothing. Nada.

Things that were done prior to this problem appearing. Install a game (Mary Kate & Ashley Crush Course), and do a lot of windows updates (including directx 8).

I can get a command prompt, and some things I have checked.

Boot using various options for running or not running config.sys, autoexec.bat and loading or not loading various vxds.
Nothing other than shell=explorer in system.ini.
Scanreg reports no errors.
Used scanreg to restore older registry, no change
Removed 3d card, sound card, modem, printer and scanner

..and it still wont get further than flashing up the explorer start bar.

Any ideas anyone?

I appreciate that the last resort is a re-install of windows, I really don't want to have to do that. I'd like to investigate the error further before doing that, so don't just recommend that!

Cheers,
Al.

 

[ski]

It appears that your system.ini file is corrupt if the only item in it is 'shell=explorer.exe'.

It's normally restored with 'scanreg/restore'.
But if this did not work as you mentioned, then at a DOS prompt look for a file like system.bak, system.tmp, system.000, etc.
If you find one of these, then rename it to system.ini

If you do not find any files that look like these, then..........well, you know.

 

[wolluf]

nprotect - is this Norton Protection? Don't know if causing problem - but I never use Norton products - too many posts where it is cause of trouble. Doesn't help you get into your installation. You should have access to the startup folder \WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp if separate profiles not in use, from dos. If there are any shortcuts in there (ie, to start apps when windows loads), you could move them elsewhere. You could also try putting a copy of explorer.exe in there to see if that will run at startup. Have you checked the autoexec.bat file for starting apps also? And win.ini (load= and run=). Registry entries are more difficult, but you can use regedit (in dos) to export and import parts of the registry (eg, where startups are - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, RunOnce, RunServices, RunServicesOnce and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run if separate user profiles.

 

[popeydotcom]

Fixed.

Was a missing shdocvw.dll !

Found out by editing system.ini so that instead of shell=explorer.exe, it now says shell=winfile.exe. I then booted and windows file manager started. From there I attempted to run explorer and iexplore. Both were a little flaking. Explorer complained about a problem with a missing SHDOCVW.DLL. Sure enough there were other sh*.dll files, but not that one. I checked the properties of iexplore.exe to find out what version was on there (it was version 6). I then went to another machine which I knew had exactly the same version of internet explorer, and copied the shdocvw.dll across from there.

It now works fine.

Thanks.