Computer Help! Please Help!

Hi there, I have a big problem.

My Windows Explorer.exe file is Gone. I know that i wouldn't have deleted it, after i rebooted it was just Gone. Missing. Nowhere to be found.

I've searched for it manually at System 32...but its not there. Its like someone deleted it.

My question is, is there any place i can download windows explorer.exe off the internet? I don't have the Windows OS disks anymore.

#2. Would a Registry Cleaner help? I'm not sure it would because explorer is no where to be found.

#3. If I decide to upgrade to windows vista ... would Vista have the explorer.exe file that i need? Would i have to buy the full version or could i get away with just buying the update?


any help would be much appreciated.

If you can see your start bar, explorer.exe is still there. Is windows booting up and stopping on a black screen with white text saying its missing??? More info would be helpful to help you.

Are you posting from the missing file computer or another one. It is a hidden file and a system file that is not found in a basic search. Go borrow a XP home or XP pro disk from a friend, preferrable SP2 and boot to it. When u get to the main screen Hit R for repair. At the prompt type chkdsk /r. It will repair any missing or corrupted files on ur load of windows.

Thats about all the help i can offer at the moment with the info you provided.

Ok, heres some more info.

When i start up, i type my password and it starts fine, but theres no start-up bar at the bottom, no time, no icons.... it would just be a blank screen but my desktop picture is still there.

I can only access files manually through the taskmgr.

But it wont let me connect to the internet and it wont let me run an antivirus.

when i went to registry editor it didn't show me anything out of the usual...but i may have missed something.

oh and when i go to taskmgr to open up windows explorer, i've tried explorer and explorer.exe ... they both say "file not found" check to make sure you are using the correct library" or something to that effect.

I hope this helps.

I am close friends with my neighbor and she lets me check my mail and look for computer help on her computer...that is where i am typing this from.

thank you in advance for your help.

Have you tried booting the PC in safe mode?

If not, reboot the pc, then press F8 just after post, you should get a menu, from which you can tell windows to boot into safe mode.

If you can boot into safe mode, but still get no start bar (which I suspect will be the situation), then personally I would suggest reinstalling windows, as a missing explorer.exe can be a symptom of a much larger problem (virus, failing hard disk, corrupted filesystem, other assorted nasties).

If you have important files that you need to backup, but can't do anything using your windows installation, see if you can use your friend's computer to download and burn yourself a copy of Knoppix, it's a bootable linux cd... Very handy to have around for disaster recovery situations such as this.

Knoppix Site

Hope this helps. Good Luck!

thats some good advice from hclogo. Like i said, attempt to get an xp cd from a friend and do a chkdsk repair as per my first post. It will look and repair/replace missing and corrupted files. Not sure if the knoppix cd will come with some sort of disk repair utilities but the repair will. Give it a shot and see what happens. Let us know how it goes.

Silver

I'd suggest you don't put to much time into trying to get the existing windows installation working, other than a few simple possible solutions suggested already such as chkdsk (thanks S1LV3R4D0). From my experience, windows is never quite the same once something as major as explorer.exe breaks, even if you do manage to get it workable again.

If you really want to avoid having to reinstall all your programs and setting everything up again (I know it's a huge pain, done it way too many times myself), then once you have your important stuff backed up (using knoppix as mentioned above, or some other means), then try reinstalling windows over top of the existing installation. If after that, it's still wonky, then it looks like you'll have to reformat and do a clean windows install.