Nothing but the Wall-paper

[KATX]

Here is my problem running Windows 95/98: After I turn on the computer and after Windows is loaded, I get the message that "Explorer has perfrmed an illegal operation". If I close that window, all I am left with is the background wall-paper; no icons, no clock, not even the task bar or the "Start" button.

If I double right click anywhere on the wall-paper I get a window called "Tasks". It allows me to navigate the hard disk, kinda like Windows Explorer. I can also run individual programs manually by clicking on them. Here are some other suynptoms:

1. All applications have the extension "Ink".
2. If I do Alt-Ctrl-Del, in additon to the programs I am running, I have the following:
Vsstat
Webscanx
Vshwin32
3. Under C: I have 10 directories called Dir000X, X being 1 to 10. Most of them empty, a few having files simialr to Windows files.
4. The reason I said Win 95/98 is because I had upgraded to 98 but all indications at this point says that I am running Win 95.

Can someone help? Thanks.

 

[Elledan]

- Does safe mode work?
- You can try installing (at least temporarily) an alternative shell for Windows, like Geoshell (which is what I use). This way explorer.exe is not started and can thus not crash.
- Reinstalling (on top of the current installation, or a clean install) is always possible.
- With a program like Regcleaner you can regulate all start-up programs and check the registry for any malicious keys.
- Have you already checked the system with a virus scanner?

 

[theprophecy]

Wow, looks like your 98 upgrade went horribly wrong. If you chose the option to save your old setup so you could revert at a later date, I'd do that. (Course, I don't even remember if 95 to 98 had that option, it's been a while since I had to do that.)

You can try to get the shell back by running "explorer.exe" again, or even try installing another shell for 9x.