[BeautyBits]

I am by all means, not 'retarded' when it comes to computers. I know my way around them, and perhaps because it's late and I'm frustrated, I'm missing something.

I now have no taskbar. I re-plugged in a webcam I had, and now windows explorer is basically...unusable. Thank god for taskmanager...
Also...my windows key on the keyboard does not work....

I did not re-install this webcam. It is plug and play.
But I would like any help on how to get my taskbar back. Everytime I reboot, it takes forever, and when my desktop finally appears it says "windows explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close" Yeah yeah. You know the gist. Leaving me with my desktop background...no icons. No taskbar.

How can I attempt to get it back.
And how can I get to my control panel from my taskmanager....seeing as how that's the only way (ctrl alt del) I can get to any programs to open them....

Thank you guys.
Sorry for being dumb tonight. :-)


Also... ctrl+esc does not bring it up. And going to the task manager and running explorer does not bring it up. When I do that..it just brings up the error box again stating that it has encountered an error?

I realllllllly do not want to re-install this. I don't even have the windows installation disk on me...my boyfriend has it with him to fix his computer while he's away on military.... Ugh.

Hmm. Is there anyway from the task manager to get to the control panel?

Edited by BeautyBits, 26 November 2008 - 02:44 AM.

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Check if Windows will bring up the desktop and taskbar properly in "safe mode" like this:

Restart or turn on the PC and immediately start tapping the 'F8' key until the "Advanced Startup Options" appears.
Select "Safe Mode" with up/down arrow keys, then press [Enter].
Safe Mode will look very strange and the icons will be much bigger. This is usual for safe mode so don't worry.
If you now have a taskbar in this mode, it will almost certainly be a device driver that's causing the problem, because in safe mode
Windows does not load any third-party device drivers.

Try to remember the last driver you installed. If it was the webcam driver I would uninstall that and any of it's software you may have installed
with the driver. Then try booting into Windows normally. If Windows now works properly, see if you can download a newer webcam driver
from the website of it's manufacturer.

Finally, I see you are still using the SP1 version of Windows XP. I strongly urge you to install either SP2 or SP3 (you don't need to install them both) because there have been many more fixes and security updates since SP1 was released. SP3 contains all these new updates and fixes up to April of this year.

[Grandad Phillip]

Check if Windows will bring up the desktop and taskbar properly in "safe mode" like this:

Restart or turn on the PC and immediately start tapping the 'F8' key until the "Advanced Startup Options" appears.
Select "Safe Mode" with up/down arrow keys, then press [Enter].
Safe Mode will look very strange and the icons will be much bigger. This is usual for safe mode so don't worry.
If you now have a taskbar in this mode, it will almost certainly be a device driver that's causing the problem, because in safe mode
Windows does not load any third-party device drivers.

Try to remember the last driver you installed. If it was the webcam driver I would uninstall that and any of it's software you may have installed
with the driver. Then try booting into Windows normally. If Windows now works properly, see if you can download a newer webcam driver
from the website of it's manufacturer.

Finally, I see you are still using the SP1 version of Windows XP. I strongly urge you to install either SP2 or SP3 (you don't need to install them both) because there have been many more fixes and security updates since SP1 was released. SP3 contains all these new updates and fixes up to April of this year.

[BeautyBits]

I'm going to go ahead and try all that now. I'll let you know how it goes.
ANd when it comes to Service Pack 2...I i nstalled that it a few months after it first came out and my computer did not take well to it. SO i went back to service pack 1. I've been at 1 ever since.... up until a few days ago when I put 2 on there. I had all sorts of problems with Kernel32 errors and Dr. Watsons Postmortem Debugger and a few otther things. SO, I went back to 1.
Yes, I know...too many changes.

But if you say 3 is good....if I can get this running...perhaps.

Thanks. I'm going to go try safe mode now.

[BeautyBits]

No luck.

Does not work.
No matter what mode I just keep getting the windows needs to close box.


Perhaps I am forced to re-format.

[cmpm]

If you have important data on there and it's not backed up, don't get too hasty.
These folks know how to help you get your computer back, and walk you through it.
One of them will be dropping by soon I think.

But if you don't have anything you need to save they can still help you without the hassle of reformatting. Unless you just want to.

There is a repair install you can do, but the trouble with Service Pack 2 concerns me.

Please post the make and model of the computer.

Edited by cmpm, 26 November 2008 - 11:09 AM.

[BeautyBits]

The make and model of the computer are as follows:

Dell Dimension 4600 desktop. pentium 4
and as i said before. xp profession sp 1

Thank you all so much.