Help, Windows Explorer is wacked out

I haven't found anything yesterday, or today on this so I'm just going to start a new thread.

I have Win 7 Home Premium
Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7132
64 bit
AMD, Radeon (hope the above info helps)

I was trying to delete some programs I don't need, and basically clean up my laptop. So I'm sure, something I have done caused this, I just don't know what.

My Windows Explorer, with all my files opens fine from the Folder Icon pinned to my taskbar. But if I am in another program (forum site, photoscape etc.) and I hit browse to upload a file, it opens "a" Windows Explorer, but it has no files in it.

Also, if I download a file, like a .AVI movie for example, and I hit the "containing folder" icon in the upper right near the download arrow (Firefox by the way) it gives me an error message that has Firefox.exe in upper right of error window, and Class not registered, as error message.

Can anyone help me with this? Thank you in advance, I would so appreciate it. Denise

 

I think if you have a suggestion, I for one appreciate it very much I have considered the "restore" but think there is an easier fix. I actually got the "browse" and "upload" fixed now. I'll try and share what I did in case someone else runs into this.

I went into Folder Options, and checked the "hide hidden files" then I don't know for sure now but I somehow drug my pictures into the empty picture library so they are there now.:confused

Does anyone else ever "fix" something but haven't got a clue how you did it, LMAO!!

But now, I am still having trouble with the "download" containing folder part?? It still says "Class not registered". So my Download/show containing folder is still not linking to my WE?? Anyone? Thanks much, Denise

PS Still not fixed right, I can't upload/attach photos in email either. It just doesn't make sense, I can open my WE, and all is there where it should be, but when it comes to trying to upload from a site, when I hit browse, it shows no files. And my downloads are there in WE, but I can't connect to them through that "containing folder" icon

 

Guess what, Firefox is the issue, it finally crashed, then I got it started long enough to install Google Chrome, which I had on here at one time but deleted it. I'm setting it up now and hoping everything will be back to normal. I will let you know, I again, I so appreciate you being here, Denise

 

Oh geez, I give up, well, I won't, but that's what I feel like doing. From Chrome when I click on the download/show folder, it says "interface not registered".

I suppose I'll try the restore, but the last time I did, this a.m. it only went back a few days at most, and I've been having problems for over a week Denise

 

Ok Donetao,

Here is the report, no problems, and I uploaded this snip to the desktop so I was able to "browse" and attach here;

 

I think it asks for approval to all new folks, I don't think you've broken any rules. I sure appreciate just having you around. We haven't figured it out yet, but hey, like I said, just having someone around has helped Denise

 

Hi Donetao,

I want to thank you again, and tell you what has taken place since we talked last night/yesterday. I did the restore, back to the 22nd. I remembered that I had posted some pictures to my forum I've belonged to for a few months, had not trouble with Win Explorer up until yesterday. I am 61, and sometimes I don't get everything straight in my head. I was overwhelmed with my laptop getting weird on me.

I also installed a new anti-virus, Microsoft Security Essentials. I was using AVG, but thought I might try MSE. I also have Malwarebytes and Super-Anti Spyware. I hope that is enough, but I ran them all until 2 a.m. I had some threats detected on each, deleted them, no viruses, mostly cookies etc.

I am on here this a.m. Haven't tried uploading a file from my WE yet, but will do that next. I also found some "what appear" to be dead links, click and nothing happens. I will make a note of those if I find more. I do think if the problem still exists (broken links, Win Explorer libraries) I will need to reinstall Win 7. That is going to be hard, if not impossible as stupid me did not make a backup disk When I bought this about 2 years ago.

I will have learned a very, hard lesson if I lose my Windows. Again though, thanks for doing what you could for me, and the "restore" was the best thing. I got to a point where all I wanted to do was save my laptop, didn't care what I had to replace, or reload Denise

I also read a long article on my Nook while cleaning the laptop last night, all about security, being careful not to click on the wrong thing. I thought I had been careful, but it said even the most careful can get a virus. Still don't know because nothing showed up "as a virus" yet.

 

Oh Donetao, it's so good to hear about the factory restore. I don't know about mine, but I will give you all I can on my Laptop. I am 61, so we aren't too far apart in age I just let my senior forum know of my troubles, hoping someone there might help too, but I do feel comfy with you

Ok, I won't be discouraged. And honestly, I'm at the point Donetao, that I don't care what I have to re-download. I don't have anything on here of real value except maybe my photos that are only in digital form. The "old" photos, are all copy of hard-copy photos, so I have all of those to re-scan if I want to

Ok, I will just upload from my desktop, a photo/snip of my laptop info. I was just going through my warranty stuff, manual etc., and I am not covered after 2012. I bought it then, so I didn't purchase any warranty, I think that I had 30 days or something, maybe a year. I know I bought it in April, 2012.

Thanks again Denise

 

Ok Donetao,

I'm going to do the factory restore, found a good tutorial on Youtube. I need to get started, sorry I can't wait for you, but I would like to stay in touch Denise

 

I got'er done!! I feel better now, and I am trying to just add back the bare necessities. I just have to be more careful, but was able to set a system restore point, so that if anything goes wrong, I can use that.

I sure appreciate this site Donetao, most of all you and your help Maybe you can come join us at seniorforums.com. Small site with lots of neat seniors, sure would love to have you, it's all free of course and no aggravating ads at all My username there is nwlady if you stop in Denise

 

I can't buy anything right now, so only free stuff Don. Will the Macrium Reflect be a free program? Also, is that going to save to the DVD's, as I don't have a large enough Flash-drive, and again, I can't buy one right now?

Thank you so much, I did make a restore point, but you are right, I need to do the image thing, as well as some DVD's, Denise

 

Ok, well I don't have that, unless an old laptop might work, it still runs, but about a forth of the screen is damaged. I think it's Win XP if I remember right.

 

outdoorgal...

donetao is right about imaging. It completely eliminates the need for reinstallation disks (they can be helpful sometimes still but aren't necessary) and system restore (still nice to have).

When you create your first image, just make sure you also make a separate backup for your folders containing your picture files and other regular user files. You can update this daily to make sure all your personal files can be restored in case of a problem. The image you make using an imaging program will contain only your files that were preserved at the time of the creation of the image.

You can, of course, choose to run daily image backups based on day of the week or even month, etc., too. Imaging tools give you the ability to do this with a minimum of disk space usage by making it possible for you to build on your original image backup with backups that record only the differences between the state of the PC at the time of backup and the state of the PC at the time of the original backup.

Don't mean to make it sound like a really difficult technical challenge. There is some new terminology with imaging, but it's not much different than normal backup, except that daily or monthly backups are built off of a master backup (the first backup you make). The only other difference is that using the restore feature of an imaging program requires you to be able to burn the restoration utility to a disk. The utility is usually inside the program or can be downloaded from within the program and is burned to a CD, so that you can restore during boot before Windows starts...

 

Thank you so much AtlBo, I think I understand. Sort of like a map? If I add to the map each day I travel, then the map contains all I've traveled to that point. I think I will just download the software, and study it to see how it will work for me. To be honest, I just want to download the absolute necessities.

I hope I am ok with Microsoft Essentials, Malwarebytes, and Super Anti Spyware. Everything is working fine so far. I want to install my game manager from Big Fish but to be honest, I am a bit leary of that. I have games I have uploaded, just from DVD's, and then I bought one game from them.

I wish I knew what had caused those dead links, and my Libraries to go wacko. Maybe I'll never know. You can be sure I will be more careful.

Thanks again, Denise

 

outdoorgal...

Sort of like that, but the image is more like a present snapshot. The imager takes a picture of the map at a given time and sets it as the master. Then you decide how it will do the job from there. If you run the imager daily, you can set it up to create a backup for each day of the week (7 backups built off the master) or even each day of the month (28-31 backups built off the master). This is a a little bit like system restore in a way in that you can go back in time to restore a complete image of your entire system for any point in time that you have an image. The biggest difference is that you don't have to be able to access the operating system (as is essentially the case with System Restore) to restore an image. The imager restore CD will start before Windows even begins to run (in place of Windows), and the restore program will simply ask you to choose a backup to restore.

The only catch is that if you restore your complete system (OS and everything) at a time in the past, when it comes to your personal files, only the ones that were on the system at the time the image being restored was created will be available. For this reason, it is necessary to set up a separate backup for these.

Imaging is a rescue technique, and it is such a relief. I actually run two image backups. One runs every day, and I have one for each day of the week built of the master. The one for today replaces the one from last week on the same day and so on. From this backup I can go back as far as 7 days to restore should there be a chronic software problem. Then for added protection I run one extra backup off of the main. This one runs once a month, each new one replacing the old one, giving me the ability to go back to the first day of the current month. Of course, I can always restore the initial image too (the master).

As for backing up personal files, if you do the above, you might not need to create a separate backup for them. They would be backed up daily already. However, there is synching, which is a backup technique that happens in real time. A synching program essentially saves all changes to the files you tell it to in two places at the same time. Now that's real time backup.

I haven't gotten into synching yet, but I have been edging closer to getting into it.

A little bit about how the image backups work. When you create a backup off of the main (a differential backup), it saves only changes to the system since the time of the original. It scans its log of the original backup and then compares the dates and times of the files on the system, and any new ones since that time are added. It also scans the system to see which files are already in the backup or are the same as the ones in the backup. These are not added to the backup. The result is that the differential backup is much smaller, meaning that a 40 GB installation of the OS might possibly be backed up with only 5-8 GB of space used. Of course, the initial backup is larger, although master backups are encoded to reduce their size. A 33 GB Windows partition on my PC here is backed up with about 16 GB of space for the master. As for restoration, when you restore a differential backup, the image restoration program simply combines the differential backup with the master to give you the complete system as it was on the day of the creation of the differential backup being restored.

Imaging is a little bit of a challenge, but it's well worth the investment. It's definitely something also that you can find help for here at MG should you choose to begin. The only hurdles are a backup drive (as donetao mentioned) and a CD burner (to burn the restore disk).

Imaging is almost like magic to me at this point. If the OS goes haywire, I can just plug the restore CD in the CD drive, restart the computer and select the option to boot to the CD, and in 30 minutes I have a perfectly working PC again. Then I just restore my files and everything is perfectly back to normal. Might have to readd a program that was added after the image I used to restore was created, but that's such a small price for the relief of knowing I can have a guaranteed restore in almost no time. No more fussing around.

Apologies for the length here. Imaging is something that I find requires a fairly significant amount of detail to explain. For me, most explanations I read on the net prior to using imaging techniques fell at least a little bit short of adequate or complete.

 

I saved it to my notepad Atlbo, it is really over my head, but if I read it through a couple of times I may actually understand it. It would be nice if I did understand more about this because I didn't like feeling so helpless this weekend, and I am not one that can take my laptop to the pc doc everytime something goes wrong So I am really grateful for forums/people like you and Donetao, that are so willing to help others Denise

 

outdoorgal...

Yes, please come back anytime. This one thing is such a gigantic relief. You will find anyone here willing to help you through the issues. Actually, if you would like to install, say, Macrium, you could do so, and then start a thread here in software for a walkthrough for creating your first image and then through the creation of the restore disk.

I did not realize that Macrium doesn't have the differential image feature. No big deal. Imaging is mostly a rescue technique. If you just create an image and update it every once in awhile it would be a big plus. Still would be a good idea to backup your personal files daily or at least weekly, so they would be current should you need to restore.

Good luck and really please do come back if you decide to give it a go. It's not so bad, actually. Just need a backup drive...

 

Well I'm back, and not with good news I woke up to my icon for Mozilla Firefox not opening, and Norton Antivirus is still on my machine, 30 files. I finally got Internet Explorer open but have no clue why my Firefox won't open.

I ran something yesterday, after the Factory Recover called Decrapifier, or Decrap my computer. I read about this program and thought it was good, now I don't know. I prevented it from deleting anything I knew I needed. I included Norton for delete, but it didn't, then I had installed Microsoft Security Essentials & Malware Bytes.

Now I did a "restore" to yesterday so that I could get online. Before I did the restore though, My Internet Explore opened the window, but never connected to a site because it was trying to open toshiba page, said it was not responding.

I don't know, I'm desparate to find an answer. I can't keep restoring and there must be something on this computer, even after a Factory Restore, that is screwing things up Denise

 

I cannot get rid of Norton, not even with norton removal tool, the anti virus program is gone but it's left these other things behind as in "snip" attached plus total of 30, which not all are captured in snap.

Thanks you guys, hope you can still help me. Denise

 

Norton is like a virus in itself. You cannot just delete it, or uninstall. The remaining files will not go away and I get this error message when trying.

I can only guess that the Decrapifies (which is meant to remove Bloatware that is added to all new computers. Software that is not needed to run your laptop, it's all to try and get you to buy more things. For example Wildtangent games, etc. So I did try to remove all of that at the Factory Restore, after I mean. Right now, I am inclined to leave on all the bloatware (after doing yet another Factory Restore, and just find out how to get rid of Norton.

 

Outdoorgal...

Recommend just as a precaution checking into downloads here on the Software message board at MGs before downloading and installing anything. All of the software is safe to install that you get here at MGs, but some of it requires special knowledge to use properly. For this reason it's a good idea to post before installing anything.

The cleaner you used probably won't get very high marks around here. I assume it's gone since you performed a System Restore to go back a day. I guess that was the first restore point created since you used the recovery feature in your Toshiba.

Norton is really difficult I have heard. You ran the Norton removal tool, so that's good. Let me look around and see what I can come up with about the rest. Maybe someone else will be able to step in here who has some experience with Norton. Worst case, you can go to the Norton board and ask there.

 

Does not work, tried one other uninstaller as well, no go. Files still exist. It is the Norton PC Checkup that is not going away

 

I would so appreciate anything, I even tried this I just found but it does not work either. There are no symantec or Norton programs left in my Programs and Features, but when I do as "search" of my C drive, Norton PC Checkup is there, with tons of files "in it" and those files are in my Program Files (x86) File.

Thanks, I will also look at your recommends for downloads. These articles I am finding are either old, or just not for my system (Win 7). Denise

 

The main issue I am having, is I cannot delete the Norton Files for Norton PC Checkup, they still remain, and I get the error message "File in use" so I went into Task manager to try and figure out which processes might be using the files, but I do not know so I can't stop them and try to delete again.

I had the computer doing just fine yesterday after a complete Factory Reinstall/Restore, but after running a program called Decrapifier which removed Bloatware, everything still did great. I downloaded my Micorsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes, and ran them, no issues. I also added my Big Fish Games back on with one game only I had bought from them.

I also downloaded my Firefox which I prefer, all my downloads were from cnet.com.

So the last thing I did last night was try my game, which worked perfectly. This a.m. I booted up my laptop and my Firefox icon would not open. So I tried Internet Explorer which took a couple of minutes maybe more to open. Then I started looking for the problem and all is documented above.

I am sorry, I am not a pro by a longshot, that is why I came here for help. I tried to download your symantec removal tool on you homepage, and it did not remove the Norton PC Checkup. Folder in Use, Folder in use, Folder in use Here is the name of your download I tried: norton anti virus rnav 2003 but I know I need something specific to the Norton PC Checkup program.

 

Norton PC Checkup appears to be a full program that downloaded itself with my Factory Restore/reinstall. It is not in Programs and Features, it is not in my "All Programs" list in Start, and it only appears in my C drive, Programs (x86)and it has tons of files included with it.

 

I should add that I am trying to eliminate anything that could have screwed up my computer again between the Factory Reinstall and this a.m. That's why the list of things I did. Suggestion on what not to download, or could there be something in my computer that the antivirus isn't picking up.

 

What do you mean by "attach the C:\MGLogs.zip, do you mean attach it here for you to view? That must be what you mean, just not sure, Denise

 

outdoorgal...

Please take a look at this:

https://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/Remove-Norton-PC-Checkup/td-p/946069

Let us know if this has the answer for you...

 

I think it's still working but it's hanging, or stopped at analysis.exe. Thought I should check with you?

 

Thanks AtlBo, I will look, been to the site, but maybe not this post I do appreciate all you guys are doing for me. Denise

 

Ok, got it.

 

Yes, I did go there, and followed Start>All Programs>

But there was no Norton Pc Checkup. Thank you though, it might have been the answer. There has to be one I think I'll go get a bottle of wine, I don't drink, haven't tried that, so that could work:cry

 

Ok, I need a break, I'm all upset, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your help. I hope you won't get angry but I am just going to take a walk because my back hurts from sitting here. I am 61, so sort of an Old Timer myself.

I will do exactly as you say, and I will do it in less then an hour when I get back Tim, Denise

PS Yes, C drive is correct for my laptop, nothing fancy here.

 

Ok Tim, I understand, I don't expect you to be here at my beckoned call, that's for sure I will follow your instructions now, and save all the data, post it. Thank you again, so much, Denise

 

crap, won't attach here, sec.

 

I don't know why, but the "attach" isn't working, can anything else go wrong, don't answer that, I know it can

 

Ok, one more try, closed my browser and reopened it: Gads Tim, none of the features are working here, not even the smilies when I click on them.

 

I logged out of here, logged back in, tried my touchpad in case my mouse was bad, but neither way can I use any of the attach, insert, link, not even smilies And I notice the page keeps loading on and on, doesn't stop unless I hit the X in my URL field, far right. Denise

 

Ok, Internet Explorer is working for me with the "attach" feature, as well as the rest:

So I guess that means Firefox is crap now Heres the file Tim, Denise

 

What is the fix Tim? Is it the "move" tool? Norton PC Checkup is still there, and I cannot find an answer that works by googling.

Maybe I did the OTM wrong, I don't know. Denise

 

Ok, do that now, sorry, was in the shower. Denise Thank you for your reply Tim