From: Kenny on 02/08/2004
I couldn't get the darn computer to even get into safe mode.I hit F8 over and over while booting and can get into a DOS prompt.
I think my explorer.exe file is corrupted because that's the error I get when trying to get to safe mode.
I found out that you can sometimes fix the registry and scan it or change to a backed up version using a program called "scanreg".
I am still trying to recover but am posting some of the info I found so far, hoping it may help someone else. (I have two systems, the broke one is a back up anyway)
My registry is OK but I didn't have any back up copies of the registry but I did try to copy explorer.exe from my other machine over via floppy, hoping that it may just be corrupted, no luck. I am at the point of probably just reinstalling windows over this or just new, I am hoping to be able to use all my installed programs so I hope to find a solution. Hey, I got time!
Please post any other ideas you may have, thanks.
If you get to a DOS prompt, you can run scanreg just by itself, but here's the list of command switches I found, the next thing to try is a back up of the registry using the /recover switch.
Switch Description
----------------------------------------------------------------------
/backup Backs up the registry and related files without
displaying any prompts.
/restore Displays a list of available backup files, sorted
by the date and time the backup was created.
"/comment=<text>" Enables you to add a descriptive comment to the
registry backup.
/fix Repairs any damaged portions of the registry, and
optimizes it by rebuilding it without unused space.
/autoscan Automatically scans the registry and backs it up
without displaying any prompts if there is no
backup for that date.
/scanonly Scans the registry and displays a message if any
errors are found. This switch does not back up the
registry.
filename Scans the registry file specified and displays a
message indicating whether or not any errors were
found. This switch does not back up the registry.
/opt The /opt command-line switch causes the
Registry Checker tool to optimize the
registry by removing unused space.