Lost Explorer.exe

[TRAMPAW]

OK... Been on this about 10 hours now. I ran BitDefender and to make a long story short. I have lost explorer.exe I only have taskmanager to run things. I cannot find the files I need to find to reboot without cd because they are hidden and I have no way to unhide the files because I have NO Control Panel. When I type in control in run it says it cant find explorer.exe. I am a fairly smart guy and have tried everything with hours upon hours of reading posts and trying this and trying that. Anyone know how to unhide windows files just using the run option in task manager??? Cant folder named I386. And cant find programs winnt.exe or winnt32.exe. Which are the files I need to copy to fix this issue.

HELP

[khakilang]

If you have the Window CD. Boot it up and do repair. That will delete the old Window and replace with new. But some software may not work properly so you may need to re install those software again. If you do not have the CD than nothing can be done.

[chamoo007]

yes thats right...
use xp cd.. boot it up and simply repair the window.. normally all the softwares works...
its depends on your luck :)

[TRAMPAW]

Bummer... No CD

[datavirtue]

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?

OK... Been on this about 10 hours now. I ran BitDefender and to make a long story short. I have lost explorer.exe I only have taskmanager to run things. I cannot find the files I need to find to reboot without cd because they are hidden and I have no way to unhide the files because I have NO Control Panel. When I type in control in run it says it cant find explorer.exe. I am a fairly smart guy and have tried everything with hours upon hours of reading posts and trying this and trying that. Anyone know how to unhide windows files just using the run option in task manager??? Cant folder named I386. And cant find programs winnt.exe or winnt32.exe. Which are the files I need to copy to fix this issue.

HELP

[TRAMPAW]

What exactly do I do after I boot in safe mode?

[PhilliePhan]

Hi TRAMPAW,

A few questions:
-- Are you not able to restore changes made by Bit Defender?
-- What is you OS?
-- Do you have a thumb drive?
-- Can you get a command prompt?

Since explorer.exe is protected, replacing it is a rather drawn out process.
In the meantime, you might want to install http://www.litestep.net/ (if you are able - one of the reasons I asked about flash drive) to give you some more functionality until we can figure this out.

Cheers :)
PP

[datavirtue]

What exactly do I do after I boot in safe mode?

Does explorer fail in Safe Mode?

[gerbil]

If IE works you can temporarily use that as an Explorer substitute. Just type C:\ in the address bar, then rclick and Open files or folders that are shown. And so on. You also will find all Control Panel functions available there - type control panel in the addy bar.
And don't cut the story short.. just how did you lose Explorer? Is the executable gone from \Windows, or does it just not run? Why [especially?] were you running Bitdefender - did you suspect a malware issue, did bdf say what it was?

[TRAMPAW]

Ok... This is what happend excactly. I am an old man. Intermediate PC user and sometimes make the wrong decisions. I ran Bitdefender, because I acquired a nasty lil thing in my task manager>processes called qql.exe. My friend got on some porn sites while I was out. Said he was asked to Download a program to run a porn video. When I looked in downloads I couldn't find it. But immediately this new program popped up in task manager. I was able to cancel the process... But, give it a while and it came back. Then. If I left the laptop on it would send weird audio ads intermittently through the night. I investigated and found it was seen a while ago, like last June was the last time it was blogged about on the top 10 searches on Google chrome. Not many posts on it to find. Somewhere I saw someone had mentioned to one of other forum members to install and run Bitdefender. The guy came back and said. "All was found and fixed." and all was good.
OK... This is where I went wrong. Didn't take my time. When I started up BD. It ran a scan for the 1st time. It found 2 infected files in explorer.exe and winlogon.exe. It said something like the files are infected would you like to delete. I said NO. Well. I culd not continue with BD... (Which is to say it kept popping up the box if i refused). I finaly said yes to continue loading BD.
Now... to answer all questions...

-- Does explorer fail in Safe Mode? Yes, I dont know what safe mode is supposed to look like. But, I logged in as Admin. It had a black screen with safe mode text-ed in the 4 corners. No Task bar and up top/middle it said Microsoft XP Pro the build 2006 and a bunch of #'s at the end it said (SP3). Let me know I can write it down if you need it.
-- Are you not able to restore changes made by Bit Defender? When I try to open BD, it says in error message "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have appropriate permissions to access the item. I have not deleted the program because I know it has a file in there Customer support might be able to help me with. Other programs open in "C:\Program Files\BitDefender\BitDefender 2011\ folder
-- What is your OS?Windows XP Pro
-- Do you have a thumb drive? Have No idea what that is so probably no. :-)
-- Can you get a command prompt?Let me be clear here... I have full function of my computer. I can open everything in Task manager>File>New Task (Run...) Using command prompts I can get to most parts of my computer anything. I have tried alot of prompts too. I have no way to search for folders because there is no search all files prompt. I can browse I find the folders so I use it. But, I cant get task bar and have no desktop icons.

Thanks for your patience.
L

[gerbil]

Fine. Gotcha. Above when i referred to IE I meant Internet Explorer. Try it and report back. for example, if you type c:\windows into the IE address bar then you should see the files and folders inside \windows. Is explorer.exe there? And if you enter C:\windows\system32 you should see winlogon.exe [you must have that, cos otherwise you would not have been able to restart your sys].
Actually, they both should be there because the moment BDF deleted those two at your behest Windows File Protection System should have replaced then both. Obviously your sys does not have a backup of explorer.exe. You could check that by entering into IE address bar:
c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386 -is explorer.exe there? [you will only have that folder if you have upgraded a service pack, eg SP2 to SP3].

[TRAMPAW]

OK... Did not know you could find files that way. Cool.

1st in c:\windows, no explorer.exe.
2nd in C:\windows\system32, there is a winlogon.exe.
3rd in c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386 i get this message
"This webpage is not found.

No webpage was found for the web address: file:///C:/windows/servicepackfiles/i386

More information on this error"

[gerbil]

Ah. Possibly too few people do know of the commonality between IE and Explorer. You can use Explorer to go on the web, too, by entering a web address, but in a limited way because Explorer cannot handle hpertext. And you can not only find files from there, but run them if executable, or if you prefer, open them.
For the life of me I cannot remember the folder where a backup copy of Explorer.exe is kept if you have not done an SP upgrade but merely have an untouched installation. But as I said, obviously you do not have one.
Right, we need to know your XP Pro version... SP? Explorer is version specific... - and I will say this: upgrading from SP2 to SP3 will solve your problem if such is available as an option.

[khakilang]

Make your friend pay for a Window XP Pro CD for what he did. Surfing porn site will surely infected by virus not to mention the sin he has committed.

[TRAMPAW]

I think I might just have to buy it myself. Thanks for the help. I already have (SP3) so I cant upgrade right?

[gerbil]

Trampaw [is that your grandkids name for you?] check if you have this folder:
c:\windows\$NtServicePackUninstall$ - you should, unless you deliberately deleted it, from when you did either an online update or ran the self installer for SP3. It contains all the files etc necessary to rollback to SP2, including an SP2 explorer.exe version. So rolling back to SP2 would then be an option [use the Control Panel|Add/Remove Pgms page for that], and then re-updating to SP3. I prefer to use the self-installer package for that : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en
Uninstalling via Control Panel [start it with IE, dclick Add, Remove Pgms, click Windows XP Service Pack 3], and then reinstalling would probably be the easiest option to restore your sys.
And then run another virus, malware check.

[gerbil]

I must admit that I have not tried it, but it may be possible to run that SP3 installer over the top of your current installation without first reverting to SP2. Give it a try - at worst it can only deny. Ok, i hope.

[TRAMPAW]

Gonna try this. Sorry it took so much time gerbil. Having medical issues at the same time. And I got the name from some of the women in town. guess I was kinda easy when i first moved to this little town...lol It's my CB handle. I am a trucker.

[TRAMPAW]

Bummer. SP3 loaded fine. But, no explorer.exe was put in. And still have all the same probs.

[gerbil]

No problem, Trampaw. Hope you pull through. I won't ask about "some women".. :)
c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386 -is explorer.exe there? It darn well should be in the SP3 unpack. If it is, drag it over to c:\windows.

[gerbil]

No problem, Trampaw. Hope you pull through. I won't ask about "some women".. :)
c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386 -is explorer.exe there? It darn well should be in the SP3 unpack. If it is, drag it over to c:\windows.
Or... If it is not there, do you still have the SP3 exe, WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe ? If so, you can expand it from there...:
If that file is saved on your C: drive you could use this command, or modify the path to suit. Paste these into the Run window in Task Manager, and let them run:

"c:\WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe" /X:c:\SP3files
expand -r c:\SP3files\i386\explorer.ex_ c:\windows

Those two will unpack the windows SP3 downloaded exe to c:\sp3files, and then expand explorer into c:\windows, where it should be. Try then to run it via TM.
Take care to spot the spaces in those commands.. :)
- there is one after this: 86-ENU.exe"
-and one after this: \explorer.ex_ plus the 2 obvious ones near the front of the 2nd line.

[TRAMPAW]

Ohh Myy. Just a bit above my comp literacy. Except for the copy and paste part. It will take me a bit to decipher the rest... But I am gonna try.

[TRAMPAW]

OK... On the first command c:\WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe" /X:c:\SP3files
I have an error message. Found one space in it between exe" /X.
I have an error message saying "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect

[PhilliePhan]

Hi Trampaw,

Let's try something a bit easier:

Download the attached Look.zip.
RightClick it and extract Look.bat from the ZIP.

DoubleClick on Look.bat to run it. Let it run - shouldn't take more than a minute.

A text log will pop up - please copy and paste that here for us.

PP:)

[TRAMPAW]

OK... I tried to DL the look.zip. I couldnt open it. Remember. All I have is task manager to open things with

[caperjack]

what happens when you opn task managr and go new task and type in explorer.exe and hit enter

[TRAMPAW]

Read prior pages on thread.

[caperjack]

Read prior pages on thread.

its a simple question ,sorry

[PhilliePhan]

OK... I tried to DL the look.zip. I couldnt open it. Remember. All I have is task manager to open things with

My fault! Sorry!

Let's try something I used in a similar thread:
Please download ExWin.exe and run it.
Click "Extract" and it will extract the ExWin folder to C:\ExWin.
Please open that and run RunThis.bat.

Command line to run it is C:\ExWin\RunThis.bat

Anyhoo, once it runs (3-5 minutes), a log will pop up. Please post that for us.
Also, reboot your computer afterwards and see if there is any improvement.

Cheers :)
PP

[gerbil]

heya, Pops... look, please remember [or read back] what I told you about using IE to manipulate files [internet explorer.... in TM start iexplore.exe].
Opened one? Right, in the address bar type in where you saved Look.zip to [eg C:\downloads... wherever..]; when you go to it if you have any unzipping tool on your sys it should automatically unzip that file and show Look.bat, probably as an icon. Rclick that, choose Open, and it will run automatically and produce a notepad for you.