explorer.exe not starting on boot.

Soldato
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Before i go any further i would like to explain that this is on behalf of a friend, who is a bit of a wally. Especialy when it comes to computers.

He decided to change his start button following this lifehacker tip:

http://lifehacker.com/5512481/windows-7-start-button-changer-swaps-start-button-icon

Now when he boots up his pc and logs in he is greeted by a blank screen. No taskbar icons wallpaper etc.

I was on the phone to him and he was able to get task manager up and he said there were only a few processes running, explorer.exe was not running.

I changed my start button using the exact same program and am completely stumped as to what he has done.

Anyway, he has not created a repair disk (win7 32bit) and trying system restore from his win7 disk also did not work.

Any ideas or will i have to tell him to format?
 
Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ Current Version \ Winlogon

In the right pane, there should be "Shell". Ensure the data for this is explorer.exe and that only. Nothing else, and if it's missing, replace it. See how that works.
 
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Just off the phone to him there, explorer.exe is under shell data.

Ive told him to move any files he wants to save to usb via run>browse. Unless you have any other ideas ill just tell him to reinstall windows. All he was worried about was his footymanager saves :p
 
Winkey+R
Type: explorer.exe
Hit enter

you can try putting a shortcut to explorer.exe in the start menu's startup folder.
 
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I got him to try this but he said said "windows was unable to find this file".

He reinstalled windows last night, cheers anyhow :)
 
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