No Explorer, no systray. Help!

[Kubilus1]

I'm trying to fix a laptop running windows ME for a co-worker. Upon bootup, all you see is the background and the cursor. No icons, no start menu, no errors.

Pressing ctrl-alt-delete shows that the only things running are norton antivirus and an mp3 player. Explorer and Systray are absent. Basically that is all I can do in the system.

I tried booting in safe mode, but to the same effect.

The owner of the laptop informed me that the last thing that he did to the computer was download and install the mp3 software.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

Thanks in advance,
Matt

 

[butchrecon]

One thing you can try is to reload IWndows over itself without any formating. Is there info on the Laptop the user wants to keep. If getting into Safe Mode wont work then there could be corruption. Try booting to a command prompt instead of Safe Mode. Now I am not sure WinMe has this but try it anyway. Once the prompt is up type
scanreg /restore
And if it give you a choice choose the oldest one. Let us know if that helps. James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[cdogg]

I don't believe there is a command prompt in ME. Even if there were, try restoring the registry to the last backup first, not the oldest!!

First thing I would do is boot to Safe Mode (hitting F8 at startup) and see if you can get to Control Panel->Add/Remove Progs and remove the mp3 software for now.

 

[Kubilus1]

ME is DOS based just like win98 and 95. Since I don't have another win ME machine around to make a boot disk, I just used a win 98 bootdisk to get to the command prompt. From there I used scanreg /restore and was able to restore a previous registry entry and get the system back up and going. Thanks a lot guys!

Matt

 

[cdogg]

Sorry, ME is not DOS-based at all. As a matter of fact, hitting F8 at startup doesn't give you the option for a command prompt like it does in 95 and 98. Why do you think DOS-based games don't run in ME? Many older win95 games cannot run in ME either.

Using a Win98 boot disk will get you access to the c: prompt. But some of the same commands on certain files may not work correctly. Good luck in whatever you can find...

 

[cdogg]

To further elaborate, the ME platform isn't quite like Windows 2000 or XP, but it is a bit of a jump from 98SE. Microsoft attempted to further rid the system of 16-bit processes by removing DOS altogether. ME can still run applications in 16-bit mode, but it's more like "emulated" 16-bit to put it oversimplified terms.

Even in 98, Microsoft changed the version of DOS (7.xx) which is actually an "emulated" version of DOS and not true DOS (6.22). So that's why some dos games could run perfectly in 95 but not at all in 98.


** Bottom line is that safe mode is your best bet. All you need to accomplish is a restore from backup anyway, which can be done from safe mode. Not sure what you plan on doing from the DOS prompt anyway...I don't think "scanreg /restore" is a valid command to ME


~cdogg

 

[Kubilus1]

As I have heard and read, ME actually does have 16-bit realmode dos functionality, it is just hidden from the user and can in fact be enabled. (This still may in fact be emulation as you have stated above. To be quite honest, I much prefer win2000 as a grown-ups operating system and never plan to use ME much. I have to wonder why Microsoft ever bothered with ME when it is so much like 98SE.) Anyways, here is a link for a patch to enable 16-bit mode dos in ME:

<

http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/>

As I stated above, explorer did not work in safe mode either. Explorer is esentially the GUI for windows. Without explorer, you cannot do ANYTHING in windows. No control panel, no start menu, CTRL-ALT-DELETE is the only functionality available.

DOS mode was my only hope, and luckily scanreg /restore is still a valid DOS command and I was able to restore the registry to an earlier date. I did notice that certain DOS commands did not work in ME, such as EDIT. Copying the EDIT program from a win98SE machine to the ME machine allowed EDIT to work just find, it seems that ME uses a crippled version of DOS.

Matt

 

[theEclipse]

Hrm.... Your link doesn't seem to be accurate.

Robert Carpenter
questions? comments? thanks? email me!
linkemapx@hotmail.com
Icq: 124408594

AIM & MSN: robacarp

 

[smitee]

theEclipse (Programmer)

If you aren't just &quot;stirring the pot&quot;

http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/

smitee

 

[theEclipse]

;-) Robert Carpenter
questions? comments? thanks? email me!
linkemapx@hotmail.com
Icq: 124408594

AIM & MSN: robacarp

 

[cdogg]

Kubilus,

Glad to hear you were able to get to a command prompt and restore the registry from there. I guess MS does include some version of DOS that I wasn't aware of. I knew there was a way to get DOS to run on the system, but I didn't realize that it was already there and just had to be unlocked. Excellent post!!

It doesn't surprise me in the least that some commands such as &quot;EDIT&quot; have no meaning to the ME version of DOS! %-)

 

[smitee]

cdogg

I run Me and Edit brings up the editor....I did &quot;upgrade&quot; from win98 however without format..Maybe only &quot;upgrade&quot; (this may be a degrade) leaves Edit on HD which was placed there by Win98, and full install on fresh drive does not..curious

smitee

 

[cdogg]

smitee,

Yes, that would be my guess too. When you upgrade an OS, many system files from the old OS are left on the HD and only identical ones are overwritten. So the EDIT program must have been carried over in the upgrade! Interesting!