[Big Lou]

Hello,

I’ve got a real problem with my Windows ME computer. The other day I went to the Microsoft Updates website to check for updates. The site said I should download a certain “critical update” - I forget its name, but I think it was a patch for Explorer. Its size was about 3 MB.

After the download, a window said that I needed to restart my computer, so I hit the restart button on this window. Now my computer won’t work!

After the restart, I get the Windows ME screen, the hourglass, then the blue sky and clouds of my desktop picture. But there are no folders, no taskbar, no words, no nothing! When I hit Ctrl – Alt – Delete, a gray window comes up, but it’s empty (there used to be words in it).

I’ve let the machine sit while on for hours, hoping that something would happen, but no change. I’ve also used a rescue disk (and also the F8 button) to start in safe mode, but all I get is the safe mode screen. Again, no folders, nothing else. The help file mentions a scanreg command, but all I get with that is a bad command message.

I’ve also gotten to the A prompt and the C prompt (not bad for a non-techie), and I’ve run scandisk /all /surface. The scan completes and says that there are no errors.

A friend says to use the e-machine Restore Disk, but the disk says that it will wipe out anything I have on my hard drive. Am I misunderstanding that?

I've read the post from UKSalford below. Is my "rescue disk" the "boot disk" refered to in that post?

I'm running ZoneAlarm and SpyBot...is that a factor here?

What can I do? I feel foolish because about 20% of my work on this computer is not backed up. But I feel even more foolish that I downloaded that d*mn thing from Microsoft. Everything was fine before that.

Please help,
Lou

P.S. Sorry that this is so long-winded, but I’m very, very frustrated!

Edited by Big Lou, 17 August 2005 - 01:05 PM.

[Advertisements]

Don't worry about the long winded, usually people don't provide enough information.

Try this for starters. At the C: prompt type in

win

and hit Enter. Or type in

C:\windows\explorer

that should open Windows. If it doesn't the next step would probably be a registry scan.

[Tyger]

Don't worry about the long winded, usually people don't provide enough information.

Try this for starters. At the C: prompt type in

win

and hit Enter. Or type in

C:\windows\explorer

that should open Windows. If it doesn't the next step would probably be a registry scan.

[Big Lou]

Thanks Tyger for the suggestions,

But when I tried the "win" suggestion, I got this message: "cannot find IFSHLP.SYS SYSTEM HALTED" My computer then froze up.

When I tried the "C:\windows\explorer" suggestion, I got this message: "cannot run in dos"

I have also tried a registry scan (starting from the emergency start-up disk), but no matter what, I always get a "bad command or file name" message.

I thought that maybe my start-up disk was bad, so I downloaded a bootme file from the internet. But when I try to boot from the disk with that file on it, I get a "nonsystem disk" message?

Any other ideas, or is this thing truly unsolvable (I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone with this!)

Thanks again,
Lou

[Tyger]

Well, lets try this. I'm not on an ME machaine right now so I can't really check what I'm sayng, but type in

C:\windows\win
or

C:\windows\win.com

that's the file that starts windows explorer. If that opens it you may have a filepath problem.

It's probably solvable, only a bad disk would make it impossible. do you have files on the machine you want to keep?

[wannabe1]

Hi Big Lou...Welcome to G2G!

Must be my night for dead ME machines..

At the C prompt type windows\command\scanreg /restore (Note the space between scanreg and the foreward slash) and press Enter...using the arrow keys, choose a restore point before all this started to happen (go back 2 or 3) and press Enter. Be sure to remove the startup disk and reboot. Let me know how it goes.....

wannabe1

Edited by wannabe1, 21 August 2005 - 12:14 AM.