Bad explorer.exe in Win2K? Fix?

A friend who uses W2K (I'm on XP, so I'm asking for help here) asked me to go over and help him install SP4 and the blaster patch and run symantec's remover tool and a few other things. He had several other minor problems we fixed along the way. The installs and scans went well. I ran Ad-Aware and his up to date anti-v, and finally everything was clean. We ran a lot of his sware, and all ran without any glitches (Word, WPerfect, Quattro, Presentations, and others).

Then, when he tried to use his dial-up to go online, when the connection was almost up and a lot of previous steps had gone as expected, he got an error message that said C:\Windows\explorer.exe had caused a problem and Windows was shutting down. We tried a number of times, after rebooting, scanning the disk, defragging, and re-running the virus and AdAw, but no luck.

I'm thinking that explorer.exe has to be replaced from the ServicePackFiles. It's worth a try, anyway.

Do I get him to get a command prompt and then run sfc /scannow?

Does he have to reboot to a command prompt to do it, or will Windows 2K let him replace explorere. exe while Windows is running?

It's a file under 300KB, both in his Windows folder and in his SPF folder, which surprised me, cuz my XP explorer.exe is much bigger than that.

Advice and counsel appreciated. (Friend can't re-install, because he doesn't have the CD. I won't pry about that. His business.)

 

explorer.exe is the shell of windows 2000. I would try booting to safe mode with network support, this will eliminate any other services and software as th culprit for explorer.exe crashing. Most likely it is not explorer.exe itself, but something else in the system that is causing the instablility of the shell

too boot in safe mode press the F8 key when the white bar is on the bottom of the screen. It will say something about advanced boot options.

 

Thanks, Fw, and I know it's the shell, but I don't know what to try from where you left me ...

Boot to safe mode with network support ... Okay, THEN what? The object here is to get the important, in-use system files scanned and any faulty ones replaced from the SPF folder, right?

(Thanks for your patience. I can't just experiment until I get it right ... when it's somebody else's machine.)

 

sorry, I guess I left out that part eh?. Try connecting to the internet while in safe mode. If it connects then it's something that's running in the backround. if it doesn't then it might be the modem driver or something core to the OS itself like TCP/IP.

 

UPDATE !!!

Friend reports that all software he's tried works EXCEPT Microsoft everything: Word, Excel, PowerPt, Publisher all give him a "Not Installed" message when he clicks the shortcuts he's been using forever.

Except for the fact that we spent a long time with updates and other things yesterday, I'd
say he should try returning to the last known good registry from the F8 menu.

Anybody following this who has ideas? Feel free to jump right in. I need some advice, here.

 

that's certainly interesting,last known good may work, but I doubt it, that's usually for only when you pork a driver and it won't boot. I wouldsay that the fix to the office problem would be a reinstall, but he probably doesn't have that disc either. Have him physically check the location of the Microsoft office folder for the exe's

 

I would revert to the last known good registry, but first unistall all those updates and other things, if possible.
Before that scan your system thoroughly for viruses/worms and spyware.

 

Basically good suggestions, Aurelius, but we had two problems after the patches all went in:

All MSOffice apps reported that they were not installed, and

The Dial-Up Networking shortcuts he had used for years gave us the explorer.exe error report.

Everything else was fine.

Solution: I reinstalled his MSOffice, and that cured the first problem, and

I called his ISP, and tech support there asked me what software he had installed for connections to their server. I checked and found that his copy of their software was for Win95. OK. So. We've got a samrt Win2K OS that ought to be able to find its way to the internet if we have a working modem and a willing ISP, so I went in to Dial-Up Networking and deleted the shortcuts we were using when we got the errors, and created new connections with all the same numbers. Bingo! No error; no problem.

Thanks to all who gave this some thought, and thanks especially to the guys who posted.