Broken Explorer in NT4

This just hasn't been my day. Booting up my PC at work and Explorer.exe is generating a DrWatson report; result - blank screen!

Done an NT4 repair and got past the logon but Explorer only gives me the directory list - it just won't show the files inside any directory. IE6 doesn't start.

Tried a reinstall on IE6, almost there; ran a repair and IE6 seems to be OK. Excel (2000 version) reports part missing so an Office 2000 repair and teh Office apps seem to be working. That means I can access files using the file-open dialogue box.

Still just half an Explorer.

If somebody has come across this before and fixed it, please let me know. Otherwise it's gonna be a rebuild from scratch next week

 

Steve - sounds like your system had some sort of significant emotional event and my guess is you have more stuff broken you just haven't noticed yet.

Format/install is not usually my first suggestion but with thy symptoms you mention, it's what I would do if the PC were mine. If you don't already have one, an install CD with SP6a slipstreamed on it would be the best bet.

If you want to keep trying to repair the thing, I'd suggest opening a cmd window and doing chkdsk /r on all drives/partitions before going any further.

 

When I ran repair I tried applying SP6a but the only copy to hand was the standard and the PC had previously been patched up to latest in NT4 and IE6, which meant high encryption - so that copy of SP6a wouldn't run. The Windows update function via IE is also broken - it goes to the initial page but then won't run any checks.

As you say, there will be other things broken that haven't yet come to light - it's very difficult to repair an OS nowadays if it's been kept up to date because you end up with mixed versions.

It's just about usable for the moment (with a bit of hacking) but is definetely in line for a rebuild from scratch - I reckon it will take me a day to get NT and Office in and patched and fully back into the network (which is managed by others 400 miles away)! Mind you, I'll not be sitting watching it whirl away all that time - I'll be trying to get on with real work on my laptop.

Thanks.