explorer.exe not loading

I am on Windows XP Pro, when booring up everything loads find but, my explorer.exe file does not load. I have to load the Task mananger and manually load c:\Windows\explorer.exe to get it to load the Windows explorer.

Any ideas as to why this is happening. Everything else works fine after this including Internet Explorer and all other programs.

 

Can I assume this is the case after rebooting the PC? What types of security software are you running? Might be a conflict.

 

I have Norton Internet Security 2004 running and some spyware programs. Will a copy of hijackthis log help?

 

It won't help me. But you can post it here and maybe some of our resident experts can help. What about the reboot. Does this make any difference?

 

This is when the problem occurs. After reboot or on first boot up for the day. It seems that the command to load explorer.exe was removed from one of the startup files.

Do you know which file should contain this? System.ini Boot.ini?

Thanks!

 

Here is a screenie of a portion of my Autostart Viewer (Free DCS Tool). Does this help? If it's not there in your system.ini file, I couldn't tell you how to get it there.

 

Open regedit (Start, Run, type regedit, OK) and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot

There should be a string called "shell" with the following value:

SYS:Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

This string controls the default shell when Windows starts.

Then go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

There should be another string called "shell" with the following value:

Explorer.exe

This string controls what the default shell is.


Nick