I do not have a windows recovery disk and my H: drive is not detected and windows recovery is not running through that, I have tried system restore, but to no avail the explorer.exe starts every 5 seconds and crashes in 1 to 20 seconds. I have tried a registry purge, re-installed windows service pack 3, cured all trojans and viruses and started up in safe mode on the administrator account, the explorer.exe just drops and doesn’t even leave an error message and boots back up. I have killed the process and restarted it again via task manager but it only starts with the same problems. If anybody can help me I would greatly appreciate it!
I do not have a windows recovery disk and my H: drive is not detected and windows recovery is not running through that, I have tried system restore, but to no avail the explorer.exe starts every 5 seconds and crashes in 1 to 20 seconds. I have tried a registry purge, re-installed windows service pack 3, cured all trojans and viruses and started up in safe mode on the administrator account, the explorer.exe just drops and doesn’t even leave an error message and boots back up. I have killed the process and restarted it again via task manager but it only starts with the same problems. I am referring to the windows process explorer.exe and not internet explorer please keep in mind, I have no desktop, no start menu and no task-bar the only way I am talking to you know is by remembering the target and typing it through task manager ( ctrl alt delete ) and File -> New Task… please any solution is a good one for this problem please help

I had to erase everything on my computer because I couldn’t get on the net or run any of my scans or anything. When my boyfriend re did the computer all the folders I made myself were there but the downloads to everything wasn’t there. Usually it asks him to put his disk in that he made but it didn’t this time. When I download service pack 3 or my macafee it says it can not download and i have my automatic updates on but that isn’t working either. Can someone please tell me step by step how to erase everything on my computer by using the recovery disc and what could be wrong!? Thank you!!!
*This is IMPORTANT because I use the magic jack for my phone and it wont work*
Can this problem be fixed without erasing everything on the computer?

It’s service pack 3 and doesn’t seem to have a recovery boot option like if you press f11 as I’ve read elsewhere. Is there discs and does anyone have them?

So a few days ago, my Acer Laptop crashed and was giving me a message saying "Media test failure, check cable" and would not load Windows (XP) at all. I tried to reformat the HD…same problem occured. So I had an old HD from another laptop that I tried out to see if the HD was bad. I was able to load, but a day or so later it blue screened saying something about "win32k" (the blue screen rebooted too quickly for me to get the rest). So, assuming my problem with a HD prob, I went out and got a completely brand new HD and attempted to reimage using my recovery disk. When loading windows an error appeared saying something about a IE file being "corrupt and unreadable" and to "run disk check utility." I did and it "truncated" several files, but everything was running fine. I loaded everything again and within a few minutes of installing service pack 3, i got another blue screen. disk check found two "invalid" files. Can someone help please?! I’m desperate! Thanks!

Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 3

(according to the disk case)
Microsoft Office 2000 Professional
Double CD
Purchased and installed In-Store

After getting a virus, we had to do a "destructive reboot" of our Windows system using HP recovery console. In essence, what it did was delete all our files (which were backed up before we got the virus… don’t worry) so the virus went away, but left the programs on our computer intact.

Mostly.

Big, expensive programs such as Microsoft Office and Norton Anti virus decided they had just been installed and needed a product key. With Norton it was not a huge problem; we had done this once before and all we had to do was ask a chat technician to help us fix it. They uninstalled it and re-installed it, but they could do that because they had a record of our product purchase. The first time this happened with Office, it simply fixed itself after a few days.

Microsoft Office does not offer very convenient help. For one thing, the only advice I found on their site for our version of Office was this: "We may not offer free support for your Office Program any more, but if you buy Office 2007 here…." ugh.
I need to figure out how to re-activate my Office Suite without buying another product activation key.

I considered uninstalling and re-installing, but I have tried to use my product activation key without doing so and it said the key was invalid. I am afraid if I uninstall it it will simply mean the computer will lose record of our purchase and when I re-install the program the key will have already been used once and won’t work.

Even an email address or other Microsoft contact information that will get me support from them would be helpful. As a last resort we could take it to the place that installed it for us ( a Circuit City) but I think they were closed down last year.

I can not tell you how much I will appreciate answers from people who know what they are talking about. I have searched the web for an answer to this problem for most of the day.
Unfortunately, there is no phone number on our disk case. In fact there is very little on it except a website and a notation saying there is a holographic image embedded in the genuine disks. Thanks for the answer, though! If anyone has their office disk handy I would love to get a phone number.

Ok so heres the deal, I have a friend’s computer that I was trying to fix and I figured it had spyware and viruses and what not, I ran a few scanners and there were viruses and what not and it was all going well, I deleted the viruses and updated Xp to service pack 3, all the while I deleted temp files and things that I didn’t think needed to be there. So the service pack finished installing and I restarted the computer, logged in and I let some things configure and restarted it once more, however this time it came up with an error that something was wrong with the hardware or software and it was not able to boot, I tried every option on the screen and have not been able to reach so much as the login screen, I don’t have the XP disk to wipe the whole hard drive and just reformat it all so I don’t know what to do. Also, there are files on the hard drive now that I would like to be able to recover, but it is most important to just get this computer working right now, someone please help me, my email is dflint12345@yahoo.com, please please help me this is not my computer.

My dads computer shut off due to a power outage while he was updating XP into SP3 (service pack 3) and ever since then it has been doing this, any ideas? I have ideas to solve the problem but i just want to hear your suggestions. My suggestion is that something during that power outage got messed up and now i need to put in the recovery discs and repair/re-install windows.

Now, when I stick a CD in, a green light will appear for a few seconds. Then, it disappears with nothing else happening. Will a system recovery help? I use Windows XP, service pack 3. Is this enough information?

badly infected machine, no recovery disc, only the internal recovery and it didn’t speed up the computer at all. If I install service pack 3 will it possibly remove the virus?

I got an HP Pavilion a while ago and it messed up this past week, I want all the files off it because I’ve already saved what I needed. However when I do the recovery ALL of my programs of games, etc are still installed with files and they aren’t in add/remove programs. I want my HP Pavilion to ONLY have the files it came with when I first got it. None of the extra programs I installed, etc. When I use the recovery, i gives me those files, but all my games and stuff and are still there. I want it completely reinstalled. Also, when it was reinstalled when I specifically requested NOT to have service pack 3, I got it anyway. So now my disk space in my C drive is over half full without all my documents, saved games, .iso’s, music, etc. Before when I had all of that with my program files it was just barely full, so I think something is a little wrong there? I just want my computer reinstalled without any of my old files I had. Completely new and fresh as if I just bought it.
Thanks!

I have been having serious issues with my computer, and recently had to do a recovery from my start up disks (luckily I had backed up all my files on DVD about a week earlier) but in trying to update my computer I have had some issues. Microsoft update screen tells me I need to update to service pack 3, but then when my computer restarts, it won’t boot up windows, I have to go in in safe mode and uninstall service pack 3 to get my computer to work again. I have done this several times now. Anyone else have this issue? What am I doing wrong? Do I really need this update?

I have Reinstalled windows xp on my laptop using a recovery disk how do I install Service Pack 3, My laptop has sp2 on it

How do I restore my computer to factory defaults? I have been having problems and I need to do this. (XP service pack 3).

BTW~ It didn’t come with a start up/recovery disk.

I’m trying to master reset my computer (Windows XP home edition Version 2002 Service pack 3) but before i do that I wanted to know if it needs a disk or anything once i master reset it .