Bah - I've broken it, haven't I....

maby66 · 17 Feb 2006 at 14:43

Shutting down my main machine last night and half way through Windows shutdown I hit the power off on the power strip.
This morning the machine boots fine, boots into windows desktop, but I cant access IE or Outlook.
If I try, it just sits there.
I can open Task Manager, and there is an IExplore.exe process running, but it doesnt appear on screen.
Same with Outlook.
I've noticed that I appear to have a Dr Waton task running as well - dwwin.exe.
I've de-fragged, and there do not appear to be any error messages in general, but I can't run any applications - or even gain access to menu items such as "My Computer".
Any thoughts?

maby66 · 17 Feb 2006 at 15:05

Yup - numerous times - now re-booting in safe mode so I can get access to Control Panel....
I think I must have corrupted something that is loading at start up, and its hanging/not allowing anyhting else to load.
Wierd thing is that Task Manager doesn't show CPU usage/PF usage going off the clock.

maby66 · 17 Feb 2006 at 18:44

not a fan of system restore.....
looks like the dwwin.exe's come up whenever I start any process......I've disabled error reporting, but root cause (from a google) might be a corrupt index.dat file - so I'll run a chkdsk on both drives and see what happens...ho hum - any suggestions gratefully received...

maby66 · 18 Feb 2006 at 12:23

CHKDSK was the cure - a corrupt Index.dat file on the drive holding XP - all sorted now.