explorer.exe dead

I'm running on Windows XP, Intel M Processor 730

I cannot open explorer.exe. These are the symptoms that I'm facing...

I login, my toolbar appears, then I get an error log as follows:

"Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

The error signature reads as follows:

AppName: Explorer.exe
AppVer: 6.0.2900.2180
ModName: Unknown
ModVer: 0.0.0.0

I can access EVERYTHING on my hard drive via task manager, browse. I cannot, however, access ANYTHING on the desktop, if I click on 'desktop' via browsing, the taskmanager crashes. Sometimes, the taskmanager will just crash for no reason at all.

I have tried a number of things to fix the problem, all of which have failed:

1) I've tried sfc /scannow

2) manually running explorer.exe by typing in either 'explorer' or 'explorer.exe' thru the taskmanager, run file.

3) Run Symantec Anti-Virus, finds no risks

4) Went into Safe Mode, explorer.exe crashed, but I was still able to do a system restore to last week-- didn't work.

5) One of the last things I did other than look thru regedit blindly for hours on end was a repair install... which didn't fix the problem either.

Any help, at all, would be very much appreciated. I'm losing my mind here. I'm really beginning to think this has no fix other than wiping everything out... I've looked at many other forums where people have had similar issues, and many of them were left unanswered/unsolved...

 

I just made a suggestion to a similar problem (explorer.exe) in http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=127299

It might help you also. Bazza

 

http://www.colba.net/~hlebo49/errexplo.htm

Studio T