Explorer.exe - application Error

XP Home, SP2. The following message is presented after booting up...

Explorer.exe - application Error
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc00000005).
Click OK to terminate the application.

Upon clicking OK, explorer fails to open.

This occurs in Safe Mode as well. No info as to what if any changes may have started this. MS KB had only one article that seemed relevant, in which it said to edit the boot.ini, which did not make a difference.

I can however get into Task Manager and open a command prompt, with which I can use the Run command. Not sure what to do from there though. I tried sfc/scannow but that didn't help.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.


-Steve

 

Hi Steve,

I've seen several reference to Norton System Works causing this, and since I'm sure you don't have that gem of a program installed, have you tried booting from the CD and choosing the repair option?

 

Yeah, the MS KB article which described this problem also made reference to Nortons, but no, it isn't on this machine. This is a friends machine, and I don't have his CD. I'll have to look through what I have, I know I have an XP Home disc somewhere.


Thanks,

-Steve

 

Seems I don't have a Home CD available to me at the moment. Don't suppose a Pro disc would work for a repair install. If I remember I tried that once before and it didn't work. I should at least be able to get into Recovery Console though.

Any other ideas?


Thanks,

-Steve

 

Is anyone aware of a Recovery Console command that I can use to fix explorer.exe?


Thanks,

-Steve

 

Bump!


Thanks,

-Steve

 

Is Adrynalyn in the house???


-Steve

 

Sort of

Quickest way to fix eplorer.exe is to replace the whole thing from the SP2 repository, or from the CD if its on there.

Sure you don't have a rootkit?

Try this:

http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/

 

I can't seem to find a Home CD. Would a Pro w/ SP2 disc work?

Very possible. I have a feeling that once problem is fixed, there will be a whole lot of spyware and/or viruses to deal with. Got to get past this first.


Thanks,

-Steve

 

Yes, it will work.

Note the URL I posted.

 

I checked out the link, and will give that a try, but I didn't see anything on there about running Backlight from a bootable disc. If I can't get into Windows, I don't think I'll be able to use it.

Can you elaborate on replacing explorer.exe from the SP2 repository?


Thanks again,

-Steve

 

You don't need explorer.exe to use Windows. You can do it from command line, for example.

If you are extracting it from the CD, it would go something like this.

In recovery console:

Assuming you are at a C:\windows prompt:

ren explorer.exe explorer.old

expand x:\i386\explorer.ex_

I don't believe you need to specify the final file name in the Recovery Console.

X stands for the CD drive containing the XP CD.

 

Adrynalyne,

I followed these steps exactly...

...and it said "1 file extracted (or something like that). I wasn't sure if I needed to do anything else, so I then exited RC and rebooted. Upon trying to boot normally, explorer.exe problem persists. Was I supposed to do something else after that command, like copy x:\i386\explorer.exe c:\windows?


Thanks,

-Steve

 

No. The fact that you had an error with explorer.exe means that you did it correctly--it has to be there, to have an error.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

There is a value named shell. What does it have as a value?

 

The value is explorer.exe



-Steve

 

See if you can run blacklight. Download it, then run it.

You can access all of the programs via task manager, new task.

 

Will do. Thanks man.



-Steve

 

Well, I downloaded Blacklight on another machine and burned the exe to a CD. I tried to run it from Task Manager, and it does begin to launch, however it gives me the following message...

"Windows Explorer was not found for the current user. You cannot use Secondary Logon (RunAs) to start F-Secure Blacklight"

Thats as far as it gets.



-Steve

 

Probably already covered, but have you tried (from task manager) new task->run, "inetcpl.cpl", go to the advanced tab, and disabled "3rd party browser extensions"?

If you have SP 2, going into programs tab-> "manage add-ons" and disabling everything might help as well.

Does seem to be an O/S issue, especially since safe mode repos the problem, but you never know...

Any AOL/Google style toolbars/deskbars?

 

Note it happens in Safe Mode too, where browser extensions do not run.

 

OK, finally got some time to jump back on this one. Anyway, found my XP Home disc, so I'm trying to do a Repair install.

Only just as it's about to begin with the Repair install, a strange message that I've not seen before appears...

Setup cannot delete the file: intro.avi
This error will not prevent Setup from completing sucsessfully
To skip deleting this file, press ESC (recommended)
To retry deleting this file, press Enter
To quit Setup, press F3

So I'm not really sure what to do. Keep in mind, I think this machine is probably HEAVILY infected, I'm just trying to at least get into Windows- just enough to begin scanning.


Anyway, whats up with that Setup message?


Thanks,

-Steve

 

So should I choose skip?

Seems like the logical thing to do, I'm just concerned because I've never seen this message before.



Thanks,

-Steve

 

Well, its a judgement call there, but if you are doing a repair, and it can't delete something--thats usually due to filesystem damage.

So...you could also try cancelling the repair with F3, and booting to Recovery Console again, and running a chkdsk /r. Then either see if it boots normally, or finish the repair.

 

Man this thing is being such a pain.

Ran chksdk /r like you suggested, and Setup worked fine after that.

Now I'm about half way through a repair-install, and the following message just popped-up...

Setup cannot find the file cmprops.dl_

There is a browse box saying "copy files from"



What do you think? Could the because the PC has SP2, and the CD is SP1? I have an SP2 disc. but it's PRO.


Thanks,

-Steve

 

What if you enter in the browse box

X:\i386


Where x is the cd/dvd drive letter.

 

Still doesn't work. Thats actually what appears in the browse box by default.



-Steve

 

Ok, how many minutes into the repair is this?

 

I guess about half way. About 5-10 minutes after having typed in the key. The "copying files" progress bar is a tiny bit past half way, and just above that it says "Setup will complete in approximatly 26 minutes".



-Steve

 

Ok, this should be pretty straightfoward then.

At say, 39 minutes, hit Shift+F10.

That will bring up a command prompt.

Type xcopy x:\i386 c:\xp\i386, where x:\ is the cd drive letter.

Say yes if it asks if its a directory.

It should copy over the installation directory.

From there, when the error reappears, point it to your hard drive, c:\xp\i386.

 

Well the thing is, it's stuck at 26 minutes. The error message is still on the screen. My only option in the dialogue box are Retry, Cancel and Browse.



-Steve

 

Reboot. The repair process will restart from the beginning.

 

OK. That worked, but now it's hung up on mmfutil.dll

I tried browsing to c:\xp\i386 since that worked for the other file, but it doesn't seem to be able to find it.

-Steve

 

This is a 23 minutes remaining, by the way.

It's weird, I hit shift+F10 again to get to the command prompt, and in looking at c:\xp, it appears to be empty!


-Steve

 

Should I re-copy the i386 directory?



-Steve

 

Yoiu did use xcopy, right?

 

At this point, I'm not sure if its worth fighting anymore. You could install a parallel copy of XP, copy your data over to a new user account from the old install. Then, delete the old install, edit the boot.ini to remove its boot entry, then reinstall your programs. I'm wondering if that wouldn't be faster.

 

You're probably right, but I get stubborn sometimes.

So for the hell of it, I popped in a Pro disc, and it liked the files on that. So I copied the i386 directory from my Pro disc to a new directory on C, and basically browsed back and forth between the Home disc and the C:xp2\i386 directory for about fifty or so files. Setup eventually finished!

So now it's all booted up to the desktop, no more explorer.exe errors.

Now comes the fun part. This thing is so badly infected! I mean one of the worst I've ever seen.

Anyways, off to the Malware Forum!

And Adrynalyne, thanks man. I learn so much from you. Seriously, I wish I had 1/10 of your Windows knowledge!


-Steve

 

I've forgotten most of it One of those, use it, or lose it things, and with me switching to the Dark Side some time ago...

Glad to see you got it finished

 

Think I spoke too soon. Now I'm getting constant dll errors. I started a new thread for the new error since I pretty much exhausted this one.



-Steve