Windows Explorer gone- XP

[Curbkiddytech]

My dad had a crap ton of viruses that I've been trying to remove the past few days. I think i've nabbed both of them but now his Windows Explorer is completely gone. Everytime you boot his computer up and go to the desktop, all that shows up is his Wallpaper. No icons, no taskbar. I can control, alt, delete to the Task Manager, and browse to see all his files.

But when I type "c:" in the New task bar, it gives me a list of programs to open with instead of booting up Windows Explorer. Any ideas on how to fix this or do I need to reinstall the OS?

 

[KSoD]

Well first try opening the Task Manager with Ctrl+Alt+Del and from there click Run and start a new task explorer.exe and that should bring it back. But since this is XP you have the option to do a Repair install. This will save the current install and hopefully fix it so that explorer starts up on its own.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

 

[Curbkiddytech]

Yeah I'm worse off now than I was when this was posted. I can't even reach the desktop at this point. It goes as far as the Windows XP loading screen, then the screen goes black for a moment and automatically restarts. This is all that happens now. I'm pretty lost on what to do. Safe Mode does the exact same thing. Any advice on that?

 

[KSoD]

Use the XP CD and do a Repair Install. That is going to be your best bet, unless you can use the XP CD to use a Restore Point. But at this junction a repair install is your best bet.

 

[Curbkiddytech]

If I do a Repair Install, will all his data be lost? His two hard drives are on a RAID 1 Array, but I'm guessing that doesn't matter at this point.

 

[KSoD]

As i said previously, no his data wont be lost. This will just reinstall the Windows files, it will not touch his files.

 

[Curbkiddytech]

Okay, at this point I ran the Repair Install exactly like it said. There was no problems during the installation and when the computer rebooted and got to the point where the XP loading screen appears, I have nothing. Just a black screen. The floppy disk was removed and I didn't press anything when it asked to press any key for CD. The boot order was changed to read the hard disk as well. All I have is a black screen where the XP loading screen should be. Any suggestions?

 

[KSoD]

Can you get into Safe Mode? Have you run chkdsk /r /f and sfc /scannow on the drive?

 

[Curbkiddytech]

No. I cannot get into Safe Mode either. I'm running out of options here and I fear that the only option left will be to do a complete reinstall of the system, wiping everything. I know how to do that well enough, but what happens if I do a complete reinstall, and I still can't boot into the operating system?

 

[KSoD]

Well you need to insert the XP CD and go to the recovery console. You then need to run chkdsk /r /f on the hard drives and sfc /scannow as well. This will let you know the status of the RAID Array. If there are some bad spots this should fix it. There has to be something going on that is preventing it from finishing the boot. A bad driver or bad RAID controller possibly? There is something going on that needs to be found.