Nothing but 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.

 

[uhohibrokeit]

this happened when you ran a 98 upgrade? doesnt sound good... best bet is to reformat your drive and install 98 from scratch

 

[KATX]

Sorry I was not clear on that. I had upgraded to 98 several months earlier with no problem. The problem happened while I was using Juno's Internet program.

 

[FiCTi0N]

I'm assuming the juno software installed an internet explorer upgrade. This is a common thing internet software does. IF an internet explorere upgrade goes awry it can destroy your system shell as you are seeing now. A few things to try (i have to deal with this sort of thing with customers constantly where i work):

1 - you can try to fix the shell...boot to a command prompt and edit your system.ini. Change the shell=explorer.exe line to shell=progman.exe. Reboot the system and you will boot up to program manager. Go to file/run, browse to the juno CD (or any other CD you have that has internet explorer on it) and run the ie5setup (or ie6setup as it were). After this reboot backt o a command prompt, change the shell= back to explorer.exe and boot back into windows normally. If this doesn't work and you don't want to format your hard drive you can try 2.

2. Boot into command prompt, switch to the progra~1 folder on the C: drive. Rename the "intern~1" folder to something like "ie.old" or whatever you choose. Pull out the windows disc and reinstall windows on top of itself. During the reinstall windows will be forced to install your old versin of IE (4 or 5, depening on whether you have 98 or 98se). I find this works most of the time due to the fact that the windows logic searched for the iexplore.exe using the appath value in the registry, if not there it is forced to reinstall IE during the windows install (whereas this will not normally happne if it detects IE allready there...it will leave the existing version)

3. If all else fails...and you STILL don't want to format becuase you have no way of backing up all your stuff - just rename the entire windows folder (or deltree it) and reinstall windows again. Obviously then you have to reinstall all your software becuase you have no registry entries and are missing some .dlls - but your pgroam files folder is still there and whatever lese on your drive with all your files.