explorer.exe error

[BuzzKillington]

My girlfriends friend's boyfriend gave me a Sony all-in-one and it works great. It seemed to have had a lot of spyware on it so I decided to use the built in recovery...

It basically just restarted the computer and now it just tries to load and says

Explorer.exe application error.

[x88x]

I'd say ditch the built-in recovery and just use a normal install disc.

[BuzzKillington]

That was my idea too but I was hoping to keep the recovery partition.

[x88x]

Well, unfortunately it sounds like the recovery partition is toast anyways; it should have taken at least 10 minutes or so, and probably should have shown you status/etc, not just restarted.

[BuzzKillington]

I think the cd drive may be bad.

I tossed in wipedrive and it goes straight to the xp splash screen. I went into BIOS and the CD was in fact first to run. Looks like I have to pick up an external cd drive to really know. I wish I still had my old stock pile of computer gadgets and tools.

[haha49]

is it vista or xp? if its vista the recovery disks should restor the partition.. But worse comes to worse juet install unbuntu for free...

[1RealTruth]

It sounds like the disk you put in is NOT a bootable CD/DVD. Try downloading something like Hiren's Boot CD. Create the CD from the ISO and boot from that. If it still does not boot, then the CD drive may be bad.

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/ download is in the middle of the web page. This is a totally free tool you can download. It has NO limitations.

Also, just because you may reload windows doesn't mean you willl lose the recovery partition. As long as you only format and not Destroy the partitions you will keep the recovery partition.

It may not be corrupt, only the restore feature may be bad.

What exactly is the Explorer error you are receiving? Try a restart with "Last Known Good Configuration". It may boot without problems.