I  turn on my computer and all I get now is the screen. No icons or start bar. It said something about a spooler problem and explorer problem. Any ideas?? How do I fix??


THANK A BUNCH FOR ANY HELP

What OS?  I'm guessing ME or 98.

win xp. Tried restore

Did you try to go to safe mode?

yep.all I get is a blank screen with safe mode on four corners

I am using it now to get on the web by going to task manager and executing firefox manually.

From the task manager, run

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL

Goto admin tools/services, set the startup type for the Print spooler service to disabled, restart the computer.  Is this going to fix it?  Not sure.  If this fails the easiest and least time consuming thing to do would be to run a repair installation of XP.

How do you repair when many computer mfgs dont' give you a real XP CD?  Now they sell computers with only "restore" or "recovery" CD's that will only reinstall everything like it was new.  You lose all your files.

(Toshiba and HP do this)

I've restored XP before and it will save your files, it goes through the motions like a new install

Nope, not with HP or Toshiba recovery CD's.

Either one should have a disc marked operating system.  You can use that to do what's called a soft restore.  If it's a newer HP desktop and you did not make restore cd's you might be in trouble.  You can get a set from HP for like $10.  Also when you start your computer look for a prompt of hitting F10 or maybe F2 to start system restore.  Most machines will have a separate partition with a ghost image of the hdd from when it was built at the factory.

Quoted: Nope, not with HP or Toshiba recovery CD's.

or sony
they format first

Quoted: How do you repair when many computer mfgs dont' give you a real XP CD?  Now they sell computers with only "restore" or "recovery" CD's that will only reinstall everything like it was new.  You lose all your files. (Toshiba and HP do this)

If the manufacturer created a "recovery CD" that formats the drive first, then the only two options are to back up your files first to somewhere other than the hard drive (such as CD, DVD, another computer, hard drive, etc.) or just don't use that recovery CD.  But if you don't use the recovery CD, then you have to use something else...like a $100 Microsoft CD, and that's a wee bit pricey.

Most of the recovery CD's simply reinstall Windows.  Some do it without losing the files (a "dirty install") and others do it by formatting the drive first (a "clean install").  A dirty install is more apt to reveal problems down the road and might lead to a clean install.  Whenever possible, I always recommend a clean install.

And back to the original issue, I always recommend backing up the files you don't wish to lose.  I've seen many cases of where that didn't take place.  A nice-cheap solution is to play the rebate games and get a second 160GB hard drive for $20-40.