explorer.exe won't stay online

DrMorganes · 11-12-2008, 09:31 AM

Heya, all. I've a bit of an interesting issue.

The unit in question is a Dell Inspiron 1520 running Vista Home Basic. At boot, the user is challenged for her password, and the login process appears to complete normally. However, her desktop never appears. Her slideshow screensaver will kick on after a few minutes.

Further investigation via Task Manager reveals that explorer.exe isn't running. Complicating matters is the fact that explorer.exe won't start from Task Manager. It appears to - I can see her taskbar appear for about 1 second and the process name appears in the Task Manager - then shuts off immediately. All other processes and applications - including Internet Explorer - can be launched from the Task Manager successfully.

I've removed the hard drive from the PC, slaved it to another, and scanned for viruses. Nothing was found. Temporary file locations have been cleared; no help. I've verified the proper values in the WINLOGON registry key.

As I write this I'm running SFC. Any other ideas?

DrMorganes · 11-12-2008, 10:11 AM

Update:

control.exe (the Vista Control Panel) won't run, either.

SFC mentioned corrupt files were found, but could not be fixed. I'm reviewing the contents of CBS.log now, and will be running chkdsk on the hard drive via Bart's Boot CD in a few.

I'll post back with more updates as I find 'em.

Dracia · 11-12-2008, 02:13 PM

Can you get into safe mode?

11-12-2008, 09:31 AM	#1 (permalink)
DrMorganes Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 68 OS: Vista, XP	explorer.exe won't stay online Heya, all. I've a bit of an interesting issue. The unit in question is a Dell Inspiron 1520 running Vista Home Basic. At boot, the user is challenged for her password, and the login process appears to complete normally. However, her desktop never appears. Her slideshow screensaver will kick on after a few minutes. Further investigation via Task Manager reveals that explorer.exe isn't running. Complicating matters is the fact that explorer.exe won't start from Task Manager. It appears to - I can see her taskbar appear for about 1 second and the process name appears in the Task Manager - then shuts off immediately. All other processes and applications - including Internet Explorer - can be launched from the Task Manager successfully. I've removed the hard drive from the PC, slaved it to another, and scanned for viruses. Nothing was found. Temporary file locations have been cleared; no help. I've verified the proper values in the WINLOGON registry key. As I write this I'm running SFC. Any other ideas?

11-12-2008, 10:11 AM	#2 (permalink)
DrMorganes Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 68 OS: Vista, XP	Re: explorer.exe won't stay online Update: control.exe (the Vista Control Panel) won't run, either. SFC mentioned corrupt files were found, but could not be fixed. I'm reviewing the contents of CBS.log now, and will be running chkdsk on the hard drive via Bart's Boot CD in a few. I'll post back with more updates as I find 'em.

11-12-2008, 02:13 PM	#3 (permalink)
Dracia Registered User Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Surrey, UK Posts: 470 OS: Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 My System	Re: explorer.exe won't stay online Can you get into safe mode? __________________ Please do not PM me for support or add me to Windows Live Messenger. It's better for questions to be answered in the forum for others to read. You may PM me if you were expecting a response from me and 72 hours have passed.