windows xp interface dead

I have a Dell with windows xp home edition which came pre-installed.

I am running McAffee anti-virus and Black Ice firewall provided by the company I work for due to the fact that I sometimes telecommute.

Surfing on-line, virruscan started posting virus detection warnings "<filename> is a known Trojan. Recommend deleting the file... ". Started clicking the "delete" button on the virruscan boxes to clear them. There were probably 20 or so, I think they were mostly .dll files. No, I didn't write down the file names .

Next time I booted my system, I got the initial XP screen where you select which user you are (to Logon). Selected my account, heard the windows start .wav file play, got my wall paper but no taskbar, no desktop icons and windows stalled.

I can still run applications if I launch them via "new task" from windows task manager.

Tried to run windows explorer that way. Found the "explorer.exe" file in my Windows folder but I get an error message when I try to launch it which says....

"Windows cannot find 'C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe'. Make sure you typed the name correctly and try again. To search for a file, click tha start button, and then click search." .....but the file is there.

The file in the windows folder is "explorer.exe 1,008 KB 8/4/2004 3:56 AM ".

Tried to restore to a restore point/date prior to this incident - no joy.
Ran SFC /scannow, rebooted - no joy.
Not sure if I did everything I was supposed to here. Never ran SFC before. It seemed to run ok, took a while, never prompted me for an install disk and didn't report any problems. Do I need to look in a log file to see if it found problems?

Appreciate any help you can offer....

~Bob

 

Two more things to try before doing anything drastic.

- Boot to safe mode and then back to standard mode. I have no idea why but this occasionally seems to shake things loose in XP and clear up some strange problems.

- If no improvement (and probably not) then open a cmd window, key in chkdsk /r and press ENTER. Answer Yes to doing the check disk at next boot then reboot.

 

Tried safe mode and reboot to normal mode - no change.
Went to cmd and ran chkdsk /r and scheduled to run on next boot. Shut down and rebooted..... If chkdsk actually ran, I wouldn't know it. There did not appear to be any indication that this boot was any different from previous boot(s).

 

Chkdsk /r should take a while to run. 5 step process with NTFS. Shorter with FAT32 I think. In either case, it should run before the windows GUI loads and should give you an on-screen progress report. It should take at least 3-4 minutes to complete and maybe longer so plenty of time for you to see that it ran - if it did.

The fact that SFC ran fast and didn't ask for anything may not indicate any sort of problem.

You can check your event logs for the results of both the utilities. I'd suggest trying chkdsk /r again first though. If you are running NTFS, you can also used a /v switch (verbose) but with FAT32, I don't think I would since with a FAT system it will list all your files with the full path info.

Chkdsk produces an application log entry
Event ID: 1001
Source: Winlogon
with details about what it found and what, if anything, it fixed.

 

Windows GUI is not loading. I did not get any on-screen status for chkdsk. Not sure it ran. I will check the event logs if I can access them. Where do I find them and can they be accessed from cmd prompt?

on a related topic..... I've been trying to find my recycle bin to see if any of the files I was prompted to delete could be restored. I can't find the recycle bin (recycler or recycled) in my "tree" when searching directories from the command prompt. Suspect it may be due to the fact that the "hide system files" option was selected under windows control. Now that windows GUI isn't running, how do I un-select the "hide system files" so that they show up in my "tree "?

I appreciate your patience and welcome your help!

Thanks,
~Bob

 

Windows GUI is dead.
Explorer and Iexplore are corrupt.

I am doing everything in dos mode from the cmd prompt..... or
launching applications manually using <ctrl><alt><del> to get to task manager and using the File menu Run cmd.

I want to run the AVERT Stinger to detect and clean any potential trojans that may have started this mess. I'm running Windows XP Home and I will need to disable the "Restore" feature of XP.

Can I disable Windows XP Restore using the recovery console?
Can I disable Windows XP Restore using a dos cmd at the cmd prompt?

~Bob