Computer Freezes at desktop...

[jch216]

Ok,

I have my grandmothers computer on my kitchen table trying to figure out why it freezes up.

I can't tell much about the computer except that it has an AMD K6 Processor, and it has 128 megs of pc100 ram. There is a maxtor HDD in there as well. The video is built into the mobo.

The computer loads all the way to windows just fine. The windows 98 splash screen comes up as it loads, then half of the time the desktop appears and the other half it just goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen. That is as far as it goes. There are no icons, no start menu at the bottom.... nothing except for the mouse pointer. The mouse is still functional though. If I press ctrl+alt+del the task manager comes up, but there are no tasks listed.

I tried going into safe mode but everything remains exactly as it was before.

What else can I try?

[latoo]

Can you get into the bios by pressing Del or f1 when the computer first boots.
If so make sure the settings are correct for booting. If you have a windows startup disc you may try to boot from the disc. If not there are several check disks to use and get under windows to find out what the problem is.
Also check your vid card and connections.

[Foggy]

You could try installing win 98 on top of it's self you won't lose anything. :-)

[MrPurple]

You can press the Logo Key + R to get to the run menue and run explorer.exe, msconfig and check out the settings in your start up files.
Mostlikely the easiest solution would be to reinstall Windows on top of your current install like Foggy recomended.

[Bill in SD, CA]

I would also run scandisk on the drive and run Maxtor's diagnostic disk on the drive.

Bill

[Beemer]

It sounds like explorer.exe may be corrupt. Only a guess as this blinking cursor is sometimes what I get when I fudge a explorer hack.

Try getting into MS-DOS Mode and type scanreg /restore. You will have 5 backup dates to select from. (One hidden at the bottom) Select the date that would be most likely previous to the problem and follow the prompts.

Or

She could have a virus. Download Stinger onto a floppy and run it in Safe Mode.

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

If all fails, re-install. Don't forget to save any personal files she may have on her HDD. Make a copy of her addressbook. See if she has Favorites to save.

Cheers!

[jch216]

thanks for the responses everyone.

I tried the scanreg/restore and it said "restore failed" after I chose a date to restore to.

I have a win98 restore disc but it belongs to my old computer. Does that make a difference? She doesn't have a win98 disc for her computer.


EDIT:
running scan disk now.

REEDIT:
scan disk says there are no problems found.


So it has to be a windows software problem? Can I use a win98 restore disk that came with an old Emachine with this computer to restore windows without losing her personal files?

[Beemer]

Nope! Sorry. You'll have to get a hold of a Windows 98 installation CD.

Cheers!

[Whitehawk]

I had this same problem and i had to reinstall windows which fixed it - i agree with beamer - explorer.exe is probably corrupt or something like that

[jch216]

Any way to just replace the explorer.exe from dos to see if that may be the problem?