How do I stop my Windows Explorer from crashing or keeping me out of my own computer?

May 17, 2006 8:08 AM

Windows XP problem possibly involving Windows Defender or spyware.

A few days ago, I started getting errors on my laptop. Windows XP would give me an error prompt stating that Windows Explorer had unexpectedly encountered a problem and had to quit. I didn't seem to lose any data, but it would happen repeatedly, continually re-starting Windows, even though I could run other programs, (and sometimes correlated with a specific action, like if I tried to open Control Panels.) I re-booted and the problem went away. Then last night, the problem came back again.

Each time it restarts, I lose some windows information--like the formatting of my menubar, whether my quick launch items are displayed and their order, and the recent applications in my Start Menu.

I guessed it had to do with Windows Defender, as these problems came up when I switched to that. (The program itself also seemed to be wonky and couldn't get any updates.) After a few hours of wrangling around and waiting for Norton's Antivirus to do its thing, I uninstalled Windows Defender. I re-installed AdAware (it hasn't been able to get updates for the last week or two) and installed Spyware Blaster and Edwido Anti-Trojan. I ran all three, with up-to-date definitions. Edwido claimed to have found 248 bad files and AdAware found about three. But then they said everything was cleaned up. My computer seemed to be working fine. I wrote some emails, etc. I also downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy, which required me to restart.

When I restarted, my computer brought me to the log-in prompt and said that the information I'd entered was incorrect. But the problem is that I don't have information--it might have my name, but then I hit return. There's no password. So what should I do now?

I'm running Windows XP. I think I'm up-to-date with all the updates, except for uninstalling windows defender. I also run norton's antivirus pretty regularly and use ZoneAlarm. So, although this obviously sounds like a spyware problem, I think I'm usually pretty conscientious about checking for that. It could be that I hadn't run AdAware for the last two weeks because of that update problem. I do download files or use bittorent/limewire, but not that frequently: I usually just use my computer for word processing, Internet, and email. Also, I had a spyware/virus problem about a year ago, but completely formatted my hard drive then.

My second question is: assuming that I can't fix this, should I go to Tekserve or wherever and see if they can get my data and then get a new laptop?

posted by kensanway to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Also, my version of Windows XP is legit.
posted by kensanway at 8:10 AM on May 17, 2006

You can try to do a repair from the Windows XP CD.

1. Boot the computer using the XP CD. You may need to change the boot order in the system BIOS. Check your system documentation for steps to access the BIOS and change the boot order.

2. When you see the "Welcome To Setup" screen, you will see the options below This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft Windows XP to run on your computer:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.

3. Press Enter to start the Windows Setup. Do not Choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R", (you do not want to load Recovery Console). I repeat, do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R".

4. Accept the License Agreement (Press F8) and Windows will search for existing Windows installations.

5. Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair.

6. Setup will copy the necessary files to the hard drive and reboot. Do not press any key to boot from CD when the message appears. Setup will continue as if it were doing a clean install, but your applications and settings will remain intact.

You may have to reactivate your version of XP, so be prepared for that as well.
posted by Ateo Fiel at 8:59 AM on May 17, 2006

First, you may actually have a coincidental, unrelated hardware problem. If you can, you might download the Ultimate Boot CD ISO, burn it to CD, boot from that, and run the included hardware tests.

Second, if you created a System Restore checkpoint before installing something as invasive as an antivirus program, you should be able to rollback to that restore point. Windows may have created this for you, in fact.

As for your second question, if you can boot Windows, you can probably retrieve your important data yourself, if you know where it is. You would need a place to copy that data, such as an external USB drive. I strongly recommend that you get one of those anyway, for just this kind of thing. Most Windows applications store your data within your "My Documents" directory within your Windows profile, which will tend to be something like c:\documents and settings\username\My Documents. If you can't copy the files through Windows Explorer, open a command prompt and do it from there - switch to the abovementioned directory, and type something like "xcopy * x: /s /e" where x maps to your external drive/network share/whatever. Then, no matter what happens, you won't lose significant data. Unfortunately, you will lose configuration settings; also, if you stored data in other directories outside of your profile, you'd have to copy that as well.

Personally, I like to have at least two partitions on my disk, so I can store data separately from the OS. It is possible to map your Windows profile to another partition, although it isn't especially easy in some cases.

Finally, after you've fixed everything, create a non-administrative account for yourself - it's better protection than any antivirus software.
posted by me & my monkey at 4:45 PM on May 17, 2006