install xp pro over xp home?

[MrNewt]

A friend of mine has a new dell computer.
After it boots, and he logs on, he loses all of his icons and the
start menu. The background remains ok.
I then started asking him some questions, and found out he
installed xp pro over top of xp home. (his puter came w/home version)
should you reformat the drive before installing pro?
thanks

 

[spherrod]

I would generally reformat a drive before re-installing the OS - generally fewer problems that way

 

[MrNewt]

thanks, i thought so also.
would that be causing these problems with the disappearing icons and start menu?
Or is there something more diabolical at work here?
also
Is there a way to get a start menu back? without a reformat/re-install?

thanks for any insight!

 

[spherrod]

what happens if he goes into Safe Mode? Can he create a new user account?

 

[MrNewt]

i will find the answer to that, thanks

 

[Cristatus]

Try booting up normally, and then pressing Ctrl Alt Del, and then selecting File | New Task, and in the new prompt that comes up, type in explorer. That should bring back everything. If not, try end tasking explorer before following my steps above.

 

[nweaver]

the problem (most likely) is explorer is crashing (Not IE, but explorer.exe, the windows shell). Open task manager, click "new task" and enter explorer.exe

now you can go through eventlogs and things to find out WHY it's crashing on boot.

 

[MrNewt]

thanks alot!!

i will try restarting explorer and then check the logs

 

[MrNewt]

I went to taskmanager and looked for explorer.exe, and it was not running.
so I went to new task and tried to run explorer.exe, but
it would not re-start. :-(


I also went into safe mode and ceated a new user, and then logged into
the new user. The icons and start menu came on the screen for a second,
and then disappeared.

anything else i should try before reformat/reinstall?

thanks again

 

[nweaver]

see if you can get event viewer to run, it may tell you why explorer is crashing. New task eventvwr and see if you can see it. If explorer is crashing right after starting up, it' probably format time though. (easier and faster then tracking down some ghosts, with who knows what problems later)

 

[MrNewt]

thanks