Video Properties - don't have them anymore?

[Wuzup101]

Alright here's the story. I put in some CC lights a while ago and haven't had time to mount the switch yet. About 2 weeks ago the switch back was accidently shorted (touched to the case) and the computer went instantly off (as would be expected). It doesn't appear that I fried anything - but I am having some minor issues. Right after this happened when I rebooted I was getting just the background (no start menu). I hit ctrl+alt+del to get into the task manager and killed explorer.exe and started a new instance of it. This brought everything up and the computer worked as usual. I run a distributed comp program all the time so the proc is at 100% usage 24/7. There have been NO stability issues. Played Morrowind a ton over spring break on it and leave it on all the time. UT2004 demo is glassy smooth also. Everything seems to work fine... EXCEPT when I right click on the desktop and select properties from the menu that comes up nothing occurs. I don't get my video prop menu anymore. I deleted the cats I was using (I believe 4.0 or 4.1) and put on the newest 4.3 cats. The install went fine, but I still have no menu! I can't figure out what to do. I'm going to reinstall XP in 2 months when summer comes, but it would be a huge pain here at school. Anyone have any ideas at what could be causing this. I obviously think it's a corrupt file that I whacked... but I don't know what. BTW... I did a system restore and now my system boots as normal. So this is the ONLY current problem I have. I no longer have to go into task manager!

 

[Unforgiven]

i had this same issue on windows 2000 pro the other day at work and i had to update from service pack 3 to service pack 4 (against my wishes) to fix it. check your event viewer log and see what the issue is. i bet it has something to say about WMI (windows management interface).

 

[Wuzup101]

Didn't see anything about WMI and I already have sp1 on here. Is there anyway just to rewrite it?

 

[Unforgiven]

is your event log telling you what program is having the issue opening the properties? on the windows 2000 computer i was using it was telling me that a .dll was having an issue. check your event log to see if its giving you any .dll errors and a proper event id.