XP is locked up.

I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong, but I've apparantly offended Arie somehow, as he locked me out. So let me start over.

I recently bought a slightly used machine with XP. I've been running 98SE on my old one. Everything's was fine 'til yesterday. I've been running Norton, so I don't think it's a virus (!?). Anyway, here are the symptoms. (1) No taskbar. I can see it barely, but can't "get" with my mouse. It won't move up.
I can't get online; no e-mail (OE); Word won't print (it was fine yesterday); etc.

I reloaded XP, but no help. (That's where I started this thread. I thot it would be OK to reply to a similarly titled issue ?)

I can't "GET" to Restore... no Start button. I'd better stop here...

 

what happens when you hit CONTROL-ESCAPE? That should bring up the start menu.

If you hit control-alt-delete, is explorer in your running processes? Do icons on your desktop work?

 

XP is locked up (cont'd)

Joe,

"Control - Escape" does nothing.
IExplorer.exe is running when I hit "Control - Alt - Delete "
The desktop icons all work.

 

Is it XP Home or Pro? Can you boot into Safe Mode?

Since you said:

I am wondering if you did a repair install or a reformat or exactly what did you do? Did you remember to set the BIOS to boot from CD?

If you can access the admin account or safe mode try an SFC.
You will need your XP cd.
Start > Run > cmd
sfc /scannow

sfc - system file checker, retrieves the correct version of the file from %Systemroot%\System32\Dllcache or the Windows installation source files, and then replaces the incorrect file.

If you want to see what was replaced, right click My Computer > manage, expand event viewer > system.

Johanna

 

XP Lockup (Still cont'd)

Huh?

 

I agree safe mode is the next step. Since control-escape isnt working, it sounds like something has loaded a shell extension or an autorun thats hosing explorer. If safe mode doesnt work, sfc is gonna be the way to go.

 

Still locked up...

I have no idea what ya'll just said...

I did manage to get into Computer Management. Oh, boy! Under "Type" there are all sorts of "error" x's and "warning" triangles that date back to 6/10/2004, which is just about when I bought this machine from my friend. Under the "source" catagory the one's affected are "DCOM" ( "error "), "Dhcp" ( "warning ") , "W32Time" ( "error ") , "srv" ( "warning "), "print" ( "warning ", etc/

What's it all mean?

 

XP still messed up...

Does anyone have any "help" ideas for my last post?

 

Never mind

I miss read

BB

 

Does that mean I have to shoot my machine

 

no need to shoot it! My concern is that i have some ideas on how to get out of it, but its going to be too technical.

I am going to second johanna's suggestion that you do a NEW install of xp. It is my belief that last time you did some sort of upgrade, or repair install. You want to do the install to a formatted drive, by booting off the cd, or installing to a new directory.

 

So (let me be sure), in other words, I should format (erase) the existing HD and start over, yes? If so, is there anything else "special" I should do? (This is a Dell. I have all the original CD's) I've never done this before....

 

I DID NOT suggest a reformat or reinstsall, I asked if Safe Mode was available. I think an SFC would correct the problems.

Johanna

 

Johanna, OK; I did that. (what you said in post#4)
No change. I went to "manage ", also. Still the same (see post #7)
I rebooted and got this: "The procedure entry point GetIUMS could not belocated in the dynamic link libraray MSDART.DLL" Also, when I open WORD, I get this: "This document could not be registered. It will not be possible to create links from other documents to this document. "
BTW, I got my Taskbar back...(I couldn't expand it, but somehow it came back !?)

 

PS... when I first got this machine, it would FLY! Now it takes 4EVER to boot up and is very sluggish in general

 

sorry johanna, i misunderstood the direction you were headed with your installation questions.

My recommendation still stands. I believe that some of your DLL registrations were hosed (what most people would call registry corruption), and its very tedious to track each one back. since this is a new machine, nuke and pave. Especially knowing SFC didnt resolve it, who knows what else is corked. The things you report do not have any exposed troubleshooting or logging capability, so we could be here all month guessing at stuff.

 

Miracleman
Okay, thanks for posting that you tried SFC in safe mode. Since that didn't work, I agree with Joe. Reinstall XP. (I like that, Joe, "Nuke & Pave!" Gonna remember that! )

Repair XP

Clean Install XP

I would do it clean. Since you have the XP disks, should be a piece of cake!

Johanna