My explorer is not booting up at log on and neither are my icons. I have tried typing explorer.exe into the command prompt and task manager but they don't want to work. I have also looked into the "shell" thing on my regedit thing. Do I need to reinstall it somehow? I wasn't aware of what happened because I wasn't the last one to use the computer. (Stupid siblings) Please help me.
Try to boot the last known good configuration, try to boot into safemode and do a sys restore (they coulda buggered up something), failing that, a repair install of windows might get you what you need. Never done one of those myself. Hek?
most windows problems are fixed easier by just reformatting and reinstalling
damn windows
sorry i can't help
seriously though, explorer problems are a bitch to fix sometimes.
Which OS is this?
From experience; in 2K/XP, a failing explorer shell either points to a malicious program messing with your registry's winlogon shell entry, trying to place a program in the startup sequence or replacing the explorer.exe file all together. If not that, massive data corruption.
Things to try:
-Boot off of your OS install cd, and jump into the recovery console. Run a 'chkdsk /r' and watch for errors.
-Boot into safemode (with network) and see if you can launch FireFox or IE. With any luck you can connect to
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
-From safemode, run 'msconfig' and see if there are unusual programs launching at start, if unsure, just disable them all. Much easier to go back and turn them on one-by-one once you have a working OS.
-Also from safemode, launch regedit and check "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon", make sure your 'Shell' string is set to 'explorer.exe' and nothing else.
-Run the diagnostic disc from your HDD manufacturer.
-Backup and reinstall OS