Winlogon.exe not working? SHELL32.dll not found?

Hey, I'm new to this site and I have a major problem. I was restarting my computer like any other time, except this time it wouldn't restart. It gaveme an error message. The name of it was winlogon.exe unable to locate component. And it said that this application has failed to start because shell32.dll was not found. Re-installing the application might fix the problem. I don't know what to do. It doesn't let Windows start up and I can't get on it. Can someone please tell me what I can do? Do I need to reload everything over again or can I do something else to solve it?

 

If you don't want to repair-install, then you could try this out:

winlogon.exe application error

 

How do I repair-install? Sorry not to intelligent in this area. And I can't find my windows xp cd, i only have a system restoration cd with windows 2000 and 98 on it. Would that work or do I have to go but an xp cd?

 

The repair install requires a XP-Install CD.
The recovery-console description requires a XP-Install CD or a Win2k-Install CD. (Or 6 floppy disks)

Have a feeling the "System Restoration" CD's will erase everything (Also personal documents) and you will not be running XP after that, but instead Win2k or Win98..

 

So I need to get an XP-install CD either way. Ok, will it restore everything that I had or will it just reload everything? And do you have any possible knowledge of how all this happend to my computer?

 

Could be caused by a temporarily hardware failure.

Btw. what kind of filesystem is your harddisk partition using ? (FAT32/NTFS)

If FAT32 then you can use a simple Win98 bootdisk instead of the recovery console.

 

You said temporaly, so could it start working again by its own? and I'm not sure what a harddisk partition is or what filesystem it is. How would I find that out?

 

Ok, now the wierdest thing happened. I tried starting it up again because you mentioned temporarly, so I figured it was a shot. And it let me choose which mode I wanted to start it in. I picked the last saved configuration, and it let windows start up! Now I don't know what happened or what caused it, but I want to make sure it doesn't happen ever again. What do I need to do to make sure of this? Give me everything and anything please.

 

All hardware makes errors from time to time though it is very seldom. This can cause your CPU to make 2 + 2 into 5 and your Harddisk to read/write the wrong file. Sometimes the errors causes the operating system to crash other times it just continues to toddle along without taking notice of the error that just happened.

Don't know an easy way for you to do determine that.

It seems you are not that experienced with restoring a broken computer, so I suggest you invite a friend or visit the computer store to get your computer up and running. (Friend is probably the best if you want to rescue some personal files(mails, music,pictures), as the stores can have a tendency to erase everything and start from scratch, even if you tell them not to)

But it wouldn't hurt to wait a little, to see if anyone else is able to find the right cure for your computer-problem.

 

One thing is to open My Computer and right-click your C-Drive and you will see the File system. (If FAT32 then you should consider converting to NTFS)

Usually having System Restore active will save you from most problems.

P.S. Sorry that I forgot about safemode and last known good configuration, seems I'm getting old.

 

Thanks man. You've been great deal of help to me. Really appreciate it.