startup / reinstall problem

When I go to start up my computer, windows starts to load but when the wallpaper comes up, I get no icons/ start menu.

However I do receive an error window stating that "cmdninst has caused an error in <unknown>. Cmdninst will now close.

After I close the window, there is nothing there. I tried reloading windows but that does not seem to work and I dont even know if I can reload it again, it doesnt seem to recognize my boot disk now.

It almost seems like "explorer" is not starting up, like it was removed from the msconfig startup option.

How can I either reload windows or turn explorer back on?

 

Hello drecollet


Have you tried booting up in safe mode? F8

If that works, there is a good possibility that a startup process is the problem.

Forgot whether msconfig can be run - from the run box - in safe mode. If so, shut down all the startup apps, then boot normally.

If all this works, re-enable the startups one by one.

Regards - Charles

 

Yes I tried logging in under safe mode one of the times that I was trying to load w/ cd-rom support or something. Or it may have been one of the times I ran the step by step loading,

Anyways, the exact same thing happened, I get the wallpaper with the safe mode in the four corners but explorer doesn't load, I get no start menu and no icons.

 

Hi drecollet,

From what you're saying, I don't think there is a way around doing a complete (clean) reinstall of the OS. I get the impression that what you did was load the OS on top of itself up to now, which also may have contributed to this problem.

Have you created a boot disk on a floppy? On that floppy is fdisk. With it reformat the drive and create partition(s). You are going to loose everything in the form of user data - hope you have made backups a habit.

Then install the OS. All the updates from MS will have to be done again. For future reference, this site allows downloads of patches to your HD and then manual install by you:

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp?corporate=true

Regards - Charles