Win 2000 explorer.exe looping

[jerrya37]

I tried to install Turbo Tax yesterday and got a message that IE needed updating. Turbo Tax tried to update and failed (generic setup failed message). I downloaded latest version from MS and tried to install. Got same generic installation failed message. Tried to remove IE 5.0 and got message that iexecp.inf was missing.

Tried to do a Repair from Windows CD. That completed successfully, but did not fix the uninstall/install problem.

Tried to do a clean install, and it put a copy on my D drive. I could "fix" IE 5.0 (installed 6.0), but couldn't see anything in the Start menu (it didn;t migrate any of my apps).

Went back to boot to the C drive and explorer.exe started looping (near as I can tell). The machine starts up just fine and loads all software. It then seems to hang. If I go into task manager and sort the processes by CPU, explorer.exe is using all og the CPU.

Finally tried to do a clean install again, and I managed to get yet another copy of 2000 on the C drive. So there are now 2 copies on the C drive and one on the D. If I boot to the second copy on C or the copy on D, explorer does not loop. If I boot to the original, explorer still loops.

Is there any way to find out what he is looking for? I assume that he is searching for something to load, but am not sure.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[SAMUELBURG]

Hi,

IE 6 is your problem. IE 6 only run with full functionnality on Win XP because of a new "Krosoft Functionnality" (i.e. bug fixing like pigs do): exitence and use of different DLL with the same name but with different version in the same folder, witch is not possible under W2K, only under Win XP...

So your 2 solution are :

1) kill W2K-IE6 and use WinXP-IE6 (I think it's the bad solution)

2) kill W2K-IE6 and make a new install of W2K-SP3 with IE5.5 and NOT IE6. If Turbo Tax run with IE 5.5 it will be clean, if not ...

Samuel

 

[jerrya37]

I did a little more investigating and found that the looping had something to do with restoring the active desktop.

It appeared that some of the background files (the pretty pictures) wer no longer accessible. One of those was my selected background.

Was able to log-on as administrator and avoid the loop, but explorer got progressively worse (stopped allowing files to be copied).

Finally gave up anf reinstalled W2K. In the process of reinstalling all software. Was able to upgrade? to IE 6.0 for W2K.

FOund one artical on MS Knowledgebase that indicated this could happen if the same OS upgrade was applied twice. Don't know if that happened or not, but you'd think they could put something into the patch to avoid it. Their recommendation was to re-install and avoid applying the same patch twice. ????

Oh well...

Thanks for the sugesstion.