Explorer.exe Crashing on Startup

[TiSwAs]

Hi.
Using Windows XP Pro SP2
Running McAfee VirusScan 7.1 - including latest updates.
Running Sygate Firewall + Windows XP firewall.

Story
Last night left my PC as normal downloading files, came to it this morning at the user/pass prompt, thought that’s strange.
Put in password and it logged on as normal, so thought to myself that the power might have gone off during the night.. no problems......
Until the desktop appeared and then disappeared NO error messages at all - trouble is it is continuously doing it loads desktop then disappears (I presume it is crashing and explorer is reloading as the dwwin.exe process runs then disappears in task manager along).

I've started in safe mode and get exactly the same thing, no errors at all.

I can't access anything as the explorer.exe keeps crashing, i CANNOT rebuild this machine due to the data held within.
The only thing i haven't tried is a repair from the master disk as i would
a) like to know why it is doing it
b) if there is another method of repairing.

Regards
Dave

[neil121183]

Have you scanned your machine for adaware and spyware.
Ad-aware is available here = Adaware

[TiSwAs]

Thanks for your reply, my problem was that i couldn't get access to anything quick enough to run as the explorer.exe SHELL was crashing.
I've since now gained access to the CMD prompt which i can run programs from, i have updated with lated virus defs and scanned for adware and nothing came up.

Stiil looking at my friend google to help but it's not bring much up.

[TiSwAs]

[RESOLVED]

Used Nero's file explorer to view files, manually un-installed Windows SP2.
All is now rosey - just have to re-install SP2.

Thanks

[Zxian]

Hopefully you'll come back here to look at this thread again.

If Service Pack 2 was the culprit of your problems, then don't re-install it. SP2 doesn't provide that much more usefulness to the common user.

If you read the sticky at the top of thise forum, I outline basic steps to keeping your computer working well without Service Pack 2.

Cheers.

[TiSwAs]

More concerned about the security patches than the SP2 enhancements.... don't really wanna go down the route of manually installing them.... might re-install SP2 and see whats up...
Co-incidently when i got pc back up and running at home another update tried to come through - The Background Intelligent transfer Service.... tried to install it but it couldn't access a file and wouldn't install... not sure if it's because SP2 was missing or not..

Cheers for advice.