Guy's, can any of you make sense of MS error reports?
Last night after a restart, explorer.exe started crashing right at sys startup .

This is exactly what I was doing before hand:

1).Created a second 900mb encrypted partition(Dakart Private Disk)
2).Ran a full scan of C:/ with AVG.
3).As the above was running a scheduled event of CCleaner ran which was acting a bit odd; explorer kept crashing generating an error report, I would restart it by Task Manager.

Now, Xp's sys restore is [OFF] and I'm in deep doodoo, everything will start from Task Manager,Web Browser, LFS, everything.
As I'm on a laptop that resembles a Hoover, I'm the PC user that watches every windoze proccess; having the least amount of applications running when I'm "working"(Playing LFS ) so it's not a mallicious program messing things up.

Can I just re-install Explorer.exe? If so how/where? I didn't get a Windoze cd with my setup it came installed with a "data recovery" cd, which just wipes EVERYTHING, so thats a no no!???

It's worth mentioning that I gain roughly 20% performance without explorer running, hence I get 10~FPS more from LFS(Done my pb last night in fox_blgp
My question: Will I run into problems without Windoze Explorer, or would it be possible to stick to running everythin from TM?
Thanks in advance

Hmm, tricky one. Is the explorer.exe file intact?

Yes, explorer.exe would start for a second and the desktop, icons and usual explorer stuff would pop up for a second then crashes.
Another thing an application called dllhost.exe began to pop up from nowhere shortly before hand

Ouch. You DO know that explorer.exe is not only the file browser, but basically the heart of Windows? If the fault is in the exe itself, you might have a chance with some trickery using the recovery console, but else...

Smells like some malware to me. Just did some googling and came up with these similar things:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic26531.html
http://www.ntcompatible.com/thread28867-1.html

You could also try to search the MS KB at http://support.microsoft.com/search/

Get autoruns from sysinternals.com and check what loads up under the "Explorer" tab - some extra component or shell extension is probably causing it and needs to be disabled. A good way to find which one it is is to get FileMon and RegMon from the above site as well and set them to monitor all the activity of explorer.exe as it loads and crashes.

EDIT:
Also, if you're so inclined, this might be a good time to stop using explorer as your default windows shell - check out blackbox for windows (specifically bblean) - if you've ever had any experience with it as a window manager in X11 you'll love it - it's very lightweight, uses less mem than explorer and is highly configurable (through text-files if you want, so it's easy to backup).

Thanks for the advice guy's, xaotik I'll get those later, at work atm.
@ Android: sys restore/recovery is turned off, it uses 300~mb of disk space, which I do be stuck for>40gig hd.
In all honesty it ain't that bad; life without explorer, my PC has become ALOT faster!
But I suspect I will run into problems with other applications that have dependancies to Explorer.exe, or will I have a problem?
@xaotik: bblean sounds good, so with explorer & ieExplorer kicked off my system, and in it's place goes Opera & bblean, better performance...I will impliment later..cheers

Try this command:
sfc /scannow

You'll need the Windows CD. What this will do is scan your system against the installation media and replace any "broken" files. Unfortunately this means that you will have to redownload and reinstall any updates you had installed.

You will get a working PC out of it though.

you cant start it manually after booting either ?

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Try this command:
sfc /scannow

You'll need the Windows CD. What this will do is scan your system against the installation media and replace any "broken" files. Unfortunately this means that you will have to redownload and reinstall any updates you had installed.

You will get a working PC out of it though.

I didnt think system file checker was part of expedia , is it in the same place as '98>c:\windoze\system\sfc.exe?(at work atm)?
I dont have the windows cd(none came with my setup), but the i386 file contains everything afik
@ shotglass: No at startup my desktop wallpaper is there nothing else, so I ctrl+alt+delete>task manager> run explorer.exe>CRASH!!!

Quote from CSU1 :

In all honesty it ain't that bad; life without explorer, my PC has become ALOT faster!

I'm not sure if you're joking, but Windows is useless without the explorer. Of course it's much faster, because like 80% of all Windows functionality is disabled if the explorer.exe doesn't run. Like all statistics I just pulled that out of my arse, but you get the point

Quote from AndroidXP :

I'm not sure if you're joking, but Windows is useless without the explorer.

it isnt you can still start just about anything from a shell

Quote from AndroidXP :

I'm not sure if you're joking, but Windows is useless without the explorer. Of course it's much faster, because like 80% of all Windows functionality is disabled if the explorer.exe doesn't run. Like all statistics I just pulled that out of my arse, but you get the point

No, I ain't joking, theres very little happining without explorer running! and as shotglass said I can start any app, browse anywhere on the system from task manager
lmao!!! I'll name it CSU's XP Lite Edition

Quote from AndroidXP :

I'm not sure if you're joking, but Windows is useless without the explorer.

Currently I don't have an explorer.exe process running and I rarely do...

I have an alternate suggestion:
Try looking for alternate shells and dismiss explorer altogether. Like LiteStep, f.e. You may end up happier that way.
No one needs explorer.exe.

Vain

Quote from xaotik :

Currently I don't have an explorer.exe process running and I rarely do...

For years I came across the odd post here and there about people who use any other OS than Windoze, and could never understand why these people would go through the trouble of typing everything from command prompt, I just understood it to be much more of a hastle rather than simply "clicking" an icon here/there in windows explorer!
By God I understand their motive now!
BTW: does anyone know how Windows OS compares to other's linux, etc???

Well yeah, of course there are the few odd balls and command line fetishists here and there. I should've known that before making such a broad statement

And now back to fixing CSU's problem, please.

Not using explorer as your shell doesn't mean you'll be stuck in command line, you can just use an alternative shell that suits you and use explorer only as your file manager if you so feel - it doesn't have to stay resident for that. And anyhow, DOS is and always has been rather crap in terms of useability.

@CSU1
Windows vs other OSs? That's a very big subject by some, but rather small by me: it's all on what you want to do really and if the software you use (and can use under any given OS) serves your goals as a user. There are alot of websites which deal on arguing the pros and cons and compare OSs - rather a pointless endeavour IMO.

Quote from CSU1 :

BTW: does anyone know how Windows OS compares to other's linux, etc???

when it comes down to running games (lfs) its the os of choice

Quote from Shotglass :

when it comes down to running games (lfs) its the os of choice

:jawdrop: LFS is an operating system! OMG I must have missed the last patch, or is it a mod or somwthin
Really tho' I've already bannished ieExplorer from my system to replace it with Opera>next on the chop list is Explorer itself to be replaced by bblean or similar
All because I've whitnessed how much resorces both use, a ridiculious(spelling ) amount

Quote from CSU1 :

:jawdrop: LFS is an operating system! OMG I must have missed the last patch, or is it a mod or somwthin
Really tho' I've already bannished ieExplorer from my system to replace it with Opera>next on the chop list is Explorer itself to be replaced by bblean or similar
All because I've whitnessed how much resorces both use, a ridiculious(spelling ) amount

LFS is indeed an OS, see here.

If you re-read the other post, Shotglass is saying that for playing games, eg. LFS, then windoze is the OS of choice.

Yeah ok! sometomes I cant help trying to b a smartass, I've been this way since I was one and a half I believe anyway thanks to everyone for the help/input>I can see the light now>Delete as much of Bill's shite off my box as I can

Quote from CSU1 :

Yeah ok! sometomes I cant help trying to b a smartass, I've been this way since I was one and a half I believe anyway thanks to everyone for the help/input>I can see the light now>Delete as much of Bill's shite off my box as I can

Heh, I saw it as an opportunity to bring that thread to peoples attention, it really is a classic.

Quote from Bean0 :

Heh, I saw it as an opportunity to bring that thread to peoples attention, it really is a classic.

OT: And I must thank you for it - I hadn't noticed it before. That was great - about halfway through the OP of that thread I was wondering "why is he describing something like this in the LFS forums - oh... L... F... S... he couldn't possibly have... *further down* holy crap, he did..."

Quote from Bean0 :

LFS is indeed an OS, see here.

ouch! Great thread though!