Explorer Bucking Froken

Hey guys, windows is wonderful:

1. Explorer boots up frozen.
2. Restarted, quicklaunch and toolbar works, but clicking on the desktop or
   start menu freezes it again (as does <Windows-key>-R).
3. Task Manager works, allows me to run programs.
4. Went to M$'s site, downloaded updates, rebooted, still broken.

Running Windows XP SP2 on HP Pavilion zd7010 laptop (the one with a numeric
keypad).  Last thing I did was turn it off by holding power because it failed
to wake up from sleep state (oops?).

Help?

I would consider deleting the entire Windows folder (out of the OS, of course) together with the Program Files one and re-install Windows again, and just after that, update the system through MS's webupdate. Oh, and turn off sleep state next time -- it's not optimal. If you're not using your system for a long time, it'sw better to shut it off completely at once.

>>1
You broke it

yeah you broke it, it seems.

try doing a recovery install. there's really no advanced method to solving your problem. you have to replace the corrupted system files, and if that fails, fucking nuke the harddrive. LOL WINDOWS TROUBLESHOOTING FUN.

sorry man, that's why it's safest not to even shut windows machines down, you never know when they won't start up again.

Sounds like the registrys screwed too, id say time to format.

>>5
seconded, thats reformat time

yet another case of "windows sucks because I don't know how to use it"

use litestep found on litestep.net

>>5
Format won't clear your data

>>9
ok now if you want to be specific.. format /q wipes the file alocation tables and effectively makes the space a file "used to take up" available for other files.

>>1
insert windows CD and pick install, then select repair. dont select recovery console unless you know exactly what files are broken to replace.

>>10
Yes, what I mean is, that's not erasing your data, it's still there, only you've rebuilt the filesystem and threw the old MFT away, but even most of that is still where it was, just not accessed.

>>11
WHO THE FUCK CARES UNLESS YOUR HARD DRIVE IS FULL OF CHILD PORN AND YOU'RE SELLING IT TO AN FBI AGENT

hehe, windows is cool because no one knows what to do except "reinstall".

p.s. I'm using litestep.. it's got issues with my dual screen setup, but at least it's stable.

>>13
That's because when Windows breaks, it tends to be FUBAR because of the nature of how Windows works.

>>13
what 14 said, plus theres alot of stuff that requires some extremely arcane "start from the cd while doing 20 hailmarys and pressing 3 keys" shit to do. its almost always just faster to reinstall.

whereas with osx, linux, bsd, BEOS, fuck anything else even windows 9x it was easy to just replace hosed files, or fix stuff from the terminal/command line