desktop not coming up in safe mode or in normal mode.

purply

guys im confused. i dont understand what it is im doing. and because i cant see his computer (my partner who has the problem and who is in another town), its really dfficult to tell you exactly whats happening.

meep-thanks for your reply
he has tried to do chkdsk /f /r

but it says "cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like the volume to be checked next time the system restarts"

he's clicked on yes

he typed dir/w and he's got a directory of c:/ and various file names

albertross_2

ask him to reboot, which will then run checkdisk, and if there is a disk corruption, hopefully it will fix it..

purply

guys-thanks for your replies. but i'm really fed up as i think he needs to be online and telling you guys what the problem is, so i'm gonna go.

i think the best thing to do is to get this boot-up disk and hopefully that will iron out the problems.

Im really sorry for wasting your time, but if you have anything else that might help, please reply! I do appreciate all the help ive received this evening and hopefully i'l be able to tell you that he has sorted it out.

Happy new year to everyone!

albertross_2

Purple,

it's difficult for us too, as we are even further away.. stick with us, and hopefully it will be sorted.

what you trying to do is go into the windows directory (which may not be called windows, could be winnt, win2k etc.., and rename a file).

the %xxxxxx% bit, is like a substitute name for your windows directory, like algebra x=windows , therefore %x%=windows

the chkdsk program will check your c: drive for any logical disk corruption, and with the /f flag, hopefully fix it..

did he reboot after doing the chkdsk?

purply

oh albertross! thats really nice of you-at least you haven't given up on us!
he says he is waiting for chkdsk to scan files.
ive told him to reboot when it finishes scanning.

he's asking if you want a copy of his album when he's recovered his files as a way of saying thanks for your help?!
i hope you like alternative rock..!

purply

the system rebooted itself after chkdsk but the desktop has not appeared.

Oh well...
back to square one. but not now!

Browntoa

where does he live ??

any of us near enough to help ?

albertross_2

Purple,

If you are still here..

I think the next step would be to go back into safe mode with command prompt and try doing that rename thing again, you were on the verge of it before, we just need to get into your "windows" directory, by doing the Cd \winnt

if you could list all directories (with "win" in the name somewhere) by doing cd \ then dir it would help, failing that try cd \winnt and do the rename (suggested by other posters), then boot..

or type "explorer" at the command prompt.

if it still doesn't work, it may be a corrupt registry or profile (which we will come to later).

If he is going to be the next James Blunt, I'll settle for 1% of the royalties! (I'll split it with the rest of the techies who have helped)..

Browntoa

when he is back at the C: get him to list all the directories that are there by typing DIR

then we can help him find the Sysroot folder

Chippy_Minton

purply wrote:

Im trying to go through the following instructions but i'm bit stuck:

Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and then click Task Manager.
2. On the File menu, click New Task (Run).
3. Type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
4. If necessary, change to the %SystemRoot% folder.
5. Rename the Shdocvw.dll file by typing ren shdocvw.dll shdocvw.old.
6. Restart the computer.

We get as far as 3 and after pressing ENTER, he gets c:/WINNT/system32/cmd.exe
its in the applications and this is what's running. Behind the task manager is a command prompt screen with the same title.

Just minimize or close the Task Manager window and click the command prompt window opened by step 3. It should look something like:

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.x.xxxx]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\WINNT\system32>

This should already be the correct directory for the shdocvw.dll file, so simply attempt to rename it by typing:

ren shdocvw.dll shdocvw.old

and pressing Return. If the rename fails (because the file doesn't exist) you'll get the following error:

The system cannot find the file specified.

In which case, enter the following:

cd %systemroot%

and try the ren command again.