Explorer Issue

Until yesterday everything was working fine on my Windows XP SP3 system. I was watching a flash based video on a web site and when I tried to seek ahead in the video it froze my computer, mouse and keyboard would not respond, so I used my reset button to restart my computer.

After the reboot I was forced to login as my Admin account because due to some audit settings I made eneded up filling the event viewer logs and then needed to be cleared. I tried to open the event viewer using start > control panel > administrative tools but I found the folder completely empty. I have rebuilt the administrative tools shortcuts and changed the event viewer log settings to "Overwrite as needed".

With that problem solved I thought I was home free, apparently not. When I try and login as a limited user, any limited user, I get to the desktop just fine but the taskbar does not display at the bottom of the screen. If I open the task manager using ctrl+shift+esc I can attempt to start explorer.exe and I see it get added to the list of processes but I still do not see the taskbar.

I have tried to create a new account to see if it the problem was due to a corrupt profile but the same thing happens on newly created accounts as well. The only account that actually loads the taskbar is my admin account which seems to work just fine.

Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks in advanced.

 

I just realized I put this in the wrong section.

 

the admins will move it to another forum when they come by.

Have you tried the fixes in this Microsoft article? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318027

I'm sure it isn't that the taskbar slid down to be zero rows high. That it happens to all limited users makes me think a setting is corrupted, then the article to repair XP would probably help http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

I would be sure to have restore points before attempting these fixes though.

 

I don't think it's because I can't see the taskbar because if I try and execute the run shortcut, winkey+R, the system beeps at me which makes me believe it cannot start run due to explorer not running.

I'm currently in the process of backing up my files but once that is done i'll try the fixes in the Microsoft article.

 

I tried to perform a in-place install of Windows XP to see if that would repair the explorer issue, but it looks like that just made things worse. The install process gets all the way to where it was registering components and then the setup encounters an error and when ok is clicked restarts the system and the setup runs again. It looks like the issues seems to be related to the fact that I have VMware Server installed and for whatever reason is causing problems during the install.

It doesn't look like I have much of a choice now, and I was already planing to upgrade to Windows 7 so I'm probably just going to do a clean install of Windows 7 Professional and leave this problem behind me. Everything is backed up so I wont be loosing any data.

 

Oh NO! I'm sorry it turned out this way.

On to Windows 7, hope your install is smooth and fast!

 

Just an FYI update.

I was able to get Windows 7 Installed as i'm on it right now

but during the install process Windows could not create the partition for some odd reason. I tried removing all partitions on the drive through the setup wizard and it still would not create the partition for windows 7.

I had to boot using Gparted and delete and format then reboot back into the windows 7 installer and -- BINGO!!

It was a good suggestion handygal and i'm sure it would have worked for anyone else, but I still appreciate the time to offer guidance.

Thanks again.

 

I know it's a bit late but I have moved your thread to the correct forum.

Are you sure that your hard drive is operating correctly? The formatting problem sounded like there is either a fault with your hard drive or it's controller.