Programs not running in WinXPpro

[techwanabe]

I had a freeze up last night and rebooted, took a couple tries but the computer finally rebooted to windows.

I thought maybe it was over heating so left it off for the night. Fired it up this morning and seemed to boot ok. Then tried running a game by clicking on the desk top icon. Nothing happened. Tried opening IE6, nothing happened. Tried opening Control Panel, nothing happens. I did get Irfanview to open but something must be hosed. The desktop shows but something is amiss.

At minimum I'd like to get something working so I can save off my daughters Itunes music and then just install a new motherboard and do a fresh install of windows. Right now even Windows Explorer won't open so I can't even copy music files to a stick drive. Eek!

Ideas? Help?

Update, tried running system restore in normal mode - tried to open and it hung. Then ran in safe mode, and system restore dialogue ran normally. Chose a date 3 days ago to restore to and rebooted. Upon rebooting the system restore box tried to open and just hung.

 

[yinan]

reinstall windows.

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: yinan
reinstall windows.

Answer to all problems. Hoping for a fix but none forthcoming. Have been able to save off files in safe mode.

Might be time to trash my old Epox 8RDA+ motherboard. Got a cheap SIS41-GX replacement board to re-use CPU and memory.

 

[techmanc]

Do a repair install of Windows it may solve your problem and not lose all your settings and programs. Make a backup first with imaging software like Acronis True Image


http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: techmanc
Do a repair install of Windows it may solve your problem and not lose all your settings and programs. Make a backup first with imaging software like Acronis True Image


http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

I'm saving off the important files. I'll try running a repair from the installation disk after that.

I used to use Ghost to make an image when I was working in IT but I dont' have that available to me anylonger, and I'm pretty rusty on this stuff.

 

[techwanabe]

Running repair, now it can't copy files off the XP install disk. Lovely.

 

[techmanc]

Originally posted by: techwanabe
Running repair, now it can't copy files off the XP install disk. Lovely.

The repair process if it fails it might mess up your Windows install but the files on the hard drive can still be accessed if needed later.

 

[techwanabe]

Might be time to give up and format and fresh install
I'm running virus scan first since windows update is not working this. Time

 

[techmanc]

Try running Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware in safe mode..................

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

 

[techwanabe]

OK, I downloaded Malwarebytes and it won't install in safe mode. Hmmm since the computer won't run in normal mode I think its a no go. Time to install the new mother board and fresh install windows.

 

[techwanabe]

Update.

I tried doing a Windows Install "repair" where using the XP install disk but choose install and then repair. It's supposed to copy the system files back without changing the installed software or files. It went along fine until it got to the point it started asking for drivers from the motherboard disk etc etc. I couldn't get it to find all the drivers and had to tell it to go on without. Then it gave errors trying to copy a bunch of dll's from the XP install disk and at that point I gave up. After rebooting it seemed to boot to windows so I tried running Windows Update hoping that it would replace the files (as one guide said it would) but Window Update wouldn't work. As a last resort I scanned to see if there was a virus preventing things from working but none was detected.

In the end I reformated the hard drive and did a fresh install and everything worked perfectly. Files copied fine off the install disk and updated normally. I suspect either I had some kind of malware, undetected virus or corrupted system file - but I'll never know for sure.

 

[techmanc]

That too bad on the repair, it doesn't always work. Glad you were at least able to get the fresh install working.