CPU GURUS A Question!

[LincolnMcGrath]

My son has a CPU at his mothers. He says when it boots up there is no background and it says Explorer.EXE cannot be found. This is a brand new Compaq and he says it did not come with a restore disk. Is there a way to fix this? He says his cousin was on it during the day and may have deleted something.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.



On Edit "Explorer.EXE"

[DS1]

1. I don't think there ever was a "windows.exe"

win.exe would be the closest match

In short, get someone more qualified to give out the symptoms, the computer's probably fucked.

[LincolnMcGrath]

3. Can a user actually ruin something by delete?

It worked fine the night before. He says there is no back ground, and was not able to do anything in safemode. I will going over there tommorow to have a look myself.


Thanks DS1

[DS1]

4. It could be a virus , or one of those "click here" popups

or sometimes hard drives just freak out and a long and total power down for 10 minutes will help them "Find" the win exe.

Stranger things have happened.

[LincolnMcGrath]

14. He left it powered down for a whole day.

[Guy Fawkes]

2. 1. its a compaq...

2. when it's done booting up, hit Cntrl+Alt+dlt and run Explorer.exe

[LincolnMcGrath]

8. Explorer.exe entry point not found

The procedure entry point SHcreateThreadREF could not be located in the dynamic linc library SHLWAPI.dll.

[LibertyorDeath]

5. Well if it's a brand new Compaq

take it back for a refund

speaking as a repair tech Compaq aka Comcrap are second only to E machines for crappy quality.

they are not what you want for a good computing experience.

[hobbit709]

32. At least Emachines

let you work with them. They don't have that hidden partition

[democracyindanger]

6. Make sure there's not a floppy disk in the drive

Although that would cause a different error, but still check

Then call Compaq. It's weird that they didn't include a restore disk. At the very least there should be the OEM Windows disk--try booting up with that. You may have to go into BIOS and select the CD drive as a boot device.

[RoyGBiv]

19. Not weird ... for Compaq

Some companies -- and Compaq is one of them -- make a good chunk of their money from repairing systems or up-selling to new systems to replace "broken" ones. (That is, something went wrong, and with the fast pace of advancement, they push buying a new system rather than fixing the old one. "You want to be up to date, don't you?") One of the methods they use is not including "repair" or install discs unless they are specifically requested. If the system is purchased through some sort of special sale from Compaq, it is more than likely the restore discs were never included and couldn't have been acquired without a special request. They will give them to you -- they have to -- but they try not to.

My cousin got a Compaq a few months ago. It came with nothing. It is now broken. I had a helluva time trying to fix it because a) the Compaq website has almost nothing on it I need, and b) the motherboard has some hardwired proprietary settings and parts that will not communicate with third-party hardware. All requests to Compaq have resulted in "send to repair technician" advice ... for a "nominal" fee of course. I finally have up and replaced the motherboard with one of my old ones.

I had a Compaq Presario laptop at one point. Same problem. It came with no repair or install discs, and when I tried to get help when something went wrong, I was basically told I'd have to take it to a "certified" Compaq repair technician. Said technician spent most of his time trying to sell me a new computer. All I needed was a driver for the CD drive, which I told him. He kept trying to tell me I was wrong, but I wasn't, so I got pissed and have up on him. With much searching, I finally found what I needed on the Internet, but it was an experience I would rather not repeat. I've never had a laptop since and have always built my own desktops.

[LincolnMcGrath]

25. Will you build my next Desktop?

[RoyGBiv]

26. Hehehe...

If you were near me, I would. I only ask for enough Hot Pockets to keep my belly fully during the process. :-) You also must not complain when opening up your web browser launches FireFox or your e-mail Thunderbird. I refuse to deal with Outlook or IE.

This is usually a win/win situation. I am by no means an expert, but I can put together a decent system that works correctly, provided the parts aren't bad. This tends to reduce the number of times friends and/or relatives call me in the middle of the night asking me to fix something on their Dell.

The last system I built for someone I did for the cost of Doom 3 and dinner.

Seriously, though, my recommendation to anyone is to find a local computer dealer with an in-house technician that does their own work, which means you get a system built by someone paying attention that doesn't really want to have to mess with again and wants your repeat business for future upgrades.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

29. Get the latest Compaq drivers by going to www.hp.com

as they've taken over the company. They still keep the entire library of legacy drivers available, and if you know the model number tracking down a driver is usually pretty straightforward.

[RoyGBiv]

30. Tried that ...

What I needed wasn't there.

I dunno. Even when I had my laptop, it wasn't that barren.

[hobbit709]

31. Compaqs

have a hidden 400Mb partition on the hard drive that the motherboard BIOS looks for on bootup. that's why you can't slap in another drive and load windoze and go. I've had success with some compaq motherboards by finding out who the OEM motherboard is, flashing the BIOS and replacing with the nonCompaq BIOS from the Manufacturer. But usually I'd stay away from Compaq.

[RoyGBiv]

34. Yeah ...

I discovered that, the hard way.

I was trying to work on a friend's Compaq once and realized that a piece of the motherboard had been physically removed so as not to allow the kind of change I was trying to make. I'd worked on the exact same motherboard before and knew it had a jumper I needed to close. The pins for that jumper had been broken off, deliberately.

Quite annoying.

[UL_Approved]

7. If it is brand new, reformat it

You lose nothing (except crap software, spyware, etc.) in reformatting a new computer. If I get new hardware (it is NEVER a package deal like Dell or Compaq) I zero out and then format data storage devices. Try working on it yourselves, as tech support is a waste of time and money. You cannot destroy hardware in reformatting, unless the hardware was already failing or you have a severe virus.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

11. I am with this worthy.

Speaking as someone who does this stuff to make a living(BWAHAHA! Living.<sniff> I made a funny.) I would cut to the chase and reinstall.

Then I would have a little heart to heart with the young gentleman, on the subject of accepted use.

[LincolnMcGrath]

13. accepted use

Any ideas how this happened? I don't allow kazaa on my system. This is @ his mothers house. His cousin also caused some damage to HIS folks CPU.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

15. File sharing, AIM, Dodgy sites.

Unsecured Windows computer. A delightful recipe for disaster.

Most "kiddy software" is a recipe for problems.

[LincolnMcGrath]

17. What is kiddy software?

I put Spybot search and Destroy on it for him. He has Norton Anti-virus from the manufacturer w/updates.

[Metatron]

16. If it is the virus in my post below, it likely happened from

file sharing. My recs - anti-virus protection, firewall if on a high-speed connection, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, and Spybot Search & Destroy. That combination has kept my machine completely clean for years. My firewall is the free Sygate Personal Firewall.

[LincolnMcGrath]

18. OK explain Firewall to me please. (Sorry So Uninformed)

I have Norton Anti-Virus installed W/Updates on mine, so does he. I also have Spybot search and destroy and spyblaster. (Him Too) Are these firewalls? We are both on cable. I have never had very many probs. Only time I ever shut down was when I switched from McAfee to Norton, 2hours on tech support!.

[Metatron]

21. No need to apologize!

Sygate's firewall "protects against Trojans, spyware, worms and other known & unknown threats; prevents unauthorized or malicious applications from bypassing the firewall; enables even inexperienced users to easily customize and fine-tune security policies; provides best of breed evidence logs for intrusion analysis; easiest-to-use PC firewall and still free for personal/home use."

I like to think of it as a condom for your computer if you are on a high-speed internet connection!
Here's the link http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm.

Spybot and Adaware both prevent viruses, etc from infecting your computer. I think spyblaster is the same. A firewall also prevents people from trying to "hack" into your computer. For people on dial-up, a firewall is not usually needed because a hacker (or whatever) would only be seeking out high speed internet connections.

[LincolnMcGrath]

24. bookmarking

Thank you for the tutorial koleszar. Any chance I could hire you for the day? I pay good and being a union man, the fringes will be sweet too!

[LincolnMcGrath]

12. His mom said there is not a disc included.

Is there a different way to reformat?

[Metatron]

9. It could be the virus W32.HLLW.Nulut WORM.

According to the following web site, "windows.exe is added to the system as a result of W32.HLLW.Nulut WORM. It attempts to spread itself through file-sharing networks and e-mail applications. This program is a registered security risk and should be removed immediately. If found on your system make sure that you have downloaded the latest update for your antivirus application." http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/windows/

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

10. File sharing...

Between that, Musicmatch and AIM, on any computer I work on tells me I am gonna be making some real money. ;-)

[RoyGBiv]

20. Bottom line ...

If explorer.exe is hosed, no matter how it happened, you are most likely going to have to reinstall Windows to get it to work properly.

[Metatron]

22. Agreed. n/t

[LincolnMcGrath]

23. Thank You Roy

[RoyGBiv]

27. No problem ...

Wish I could be more optimistic.

Judging from your other comments, I'm thinking this may be a problem.

How old is the computer?

Whatever the case, you're going to need to get your hands on an install disc for Windows. Hopefully there's a Windows license number on the computer somewhere. Usually these are printed on a manual that came with the computer or on a label on the side or back of the computer itself. You *must* have one of these, and if the dealer did not give it to the person who purchased the system in some way, they broke the law. There are ways of finding it if you don't have it, but all the ones I know of require being able to load Windows, which it doesn't appear is possible in this case.

If it were me, I would contact the dealer and ask about the install/restore discs and not shut up until I get something from them, but this is where how old the system is comes into play. The older it is, the more hassle you'll get. But, you should be able to get the license number in some way, and when you have that, you can use any Windows install disc, assuming it is the same version as the one for which you have the license. (I'm guessing Windows XP here.)

[denverbill]

35. Any chance this thing had a D drive on it?

Don't some manufacturers partition the drives so that there is a backup of the OS out there?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

28. Explorer.exe is the program file that operates the GUI

(Graphical User Interface)- it's what makes it operate the graphical shell, including the Start Menu, the Taskbar, the File Manager, and the entire desktop.

If it's missing then the system will need to be restored (or in your case, reinstalled). You will need a Windows install cd (I assume it's WinXP since you say it's a new machine).

This may have been caused by a virus- his cousin was probably online and went to the wrong site. It happens quite often, especially if your antivirus program isn't kept up to date.

[Jersey Devil]

33. Use your Compaq "dump" disk to reformat

Compaqs come with a disk (and a hidden partition) to let you restore your computer to the exact same state that it came to you from the factory. Do it and if you still have problems then you have a bad hard drive or motherboard - then bring it back.