no "explorer" showing in ctrl-alt-del

No, there's still no 'explorer' showing up in ctrl-alt-del. But now that you mention it, it does seem to me that the computer has always turned off and rebooted okay since it's been running in Safe Mode. Can't connect to the internet in Safe Mode, though, so the computer as is isn't of much use to my friends...
I'd like to get to the bottom of the problem, if just for the satisfaction of knowing what did happen, but I don't know if that's going to happen...

 

OK, Pete had us remove a dialer that was showing up in the HijackThis log we posted, and interestingly enough, Explorer is showing up with CtrlAltDel now! However, Windows can still only be run in Safe Mode, and the computer now has to be turned off manually. When we try to turn it off the proper way (Start > Turn off Computer), we get a message that there is a program still running, do we want to end task, wait or cancel - Explorer is the only thing that shows up in task manager, so that must be the program that's causing the hang-up when we're trying to shut down...
I'm having my friend run Scandisk right now, as the computer doesn't automatically run it when we reboot any more, even though we're always having to close down manually.
In the meantime, any ideas what we might try next?
Thanks!

 

Hi

booting from the HDD : can you get F8 to give you the startup menu, & if so is there an option for "Step-by-step confirmation "?

if you can select step-by-step, then going through all the things that load one by one might give you an idea of which are posing problems

if you can get through with everything loading OK then you should be able to get out of safe mode ?

==

re: hanging when you try to shut down - does it actually give a name to the program which won't close?

maybe: try checking the startups, it looks from the HJT log as though there a couple of logitech things (?Logitech multimedia webcam stuff) which you may be able to prevent from starting up... I wonder whether one of these might be the culprit?


best wishes, HJ

 

Hi Hugh -
Just an update before I put a close to this thread and try installing a new OS altogether on the computer.
Tried going the "step by step confirmation route ", but somewhere around step 3 (autoexec?), we got the same old "hit CtrlAltDel to restart your computer ". If we hold down the Ctrl button, we can still get into Safe Mode, but still no luck with Normal mode.
Scandisk came back saying 'no errors found'.
The message about a program still being open does not identify a specific program. Theoretically there shouldn't be anything "extra" running in safe mode, should there? Windows Explorer is the only item that shows up in Task Manager.
In any case, it appears my friends will be inheriting a no-longer-used W2K installation disk from their daughter, so we'll try installing that and see how we fare.
Thanks for your persistent help here!