Windows Explorer probs in XP

Hey fellow Geeks! Dave in England here, long time lurker, first time poster

I've been running XP Pro on my machine for the last year with virtually no problems. I recently had a major infestation of trojans, pop-ups & spyware which it seems I have finally managed to remove with the help of the guides on this site. I booted in safe mode, scanned with NAV, Pestpatrol, A2, Ad-Aware, Giant AntiSpyware, and Scan Spyware - all current versions.

This seems to solve the problem.

However, my Windows Explorer is now playing up:

* When I view folders of images, none of my JPGs or GIFs have thumbnails, and when I double click to open them in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, nothing happens. I've also lost the thumbnails for all my AVI, WMV and MPG files, but they open fine in Windows Media Player. I still get thumbnails for my Photoshop documents, and they load up OK. I've installed ACDSee and my JPG & GIF images now load up in that, and it shows thumbnails, but I still can't see thumbnails in Windows Explorer.

* When I open the Control Panel, no icons appear whatsoever, in any view.

* Occasionally Windows Explorer will crash when I'm browsing files and reboots itself.

I've followed the recommended fix on the Microsoft Support pages which deal with thumbnail problems, which involves adding a couple of things to the registry.

I've run Registry Mechanic - it found a lot of errors and fixed them, but I still can't see my thumbnails, and Windows Explorer still crashes occasionally.

I have the XP Pro install disc that came with my machine - would anyone recommend doing a repair install, or is there a quick fix that I'm missing?

I'm a web designer by trade, so being able to work with folders full of images is very important to me - can anyone help!

 

www.switch2firefox.com Oh sorry

 

It fixes it by not using IE which he currently is having loads of problems with.

 

Heh, I'm using Opera actually. The problem I have is with Windows Explorer not Internet Explorer...

Thanks for those earlier suggestions Halo - I thought neither had worked initially but after a couple of false starts, my Control Panel is seemingly back to normal.

My main problem with the thumbnails remains however. The tweak prog you pointed out doesn't seem to have options for JPG or GIF files which are the ones I really need to fix. It does have options to restore AVI / MPG thumbs but that hasn't worked...

 

Any more idea on this before I resort to a re-install of XP? I'm guessing it will do the trick but it seems so crude - everything else on my PC is working fine...

 

daveydude,

This Microsoft Support article, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;192573 is probably what is wrong, especially

But, please note that this article does not apply to XP, just previous versions, and from what I can find out there were significant changes made in XP's registry and this solution would not be advised. I just wanted to give you an idea of what the problem might be.

Also, in checking possible solutions there are several fixes available for this but I cannot find any for XP. Previewfix seems to work with Windows 98, ME, and NT, but says nothing about XP. Hopefully, we can find something before you consider reinstall.

Steve

 

I checked out that Microsoft support page - I tried a fix last week which added that value to the registry but nothing happened. As you say it may be due to the fact that I'm using XP and that's a fix for Win95-2000.

 

You could try to re-register these DLL's

In my oppinion you have so many issues with your Windows, that should reinstall. The quick way is to insert the xp-install-cd while in Windows and run this command (X is the driveletter of your cd-drive):

Things to remember before doing this:
1. Make a backup of your important documents (Just in case the reinstall should go bad)
2. Disconnect from the Internet to avoid sasser/blaster
3. Have the network install of SP2 ready so you can apply after doing the reinstall