Currently, I am running on Task Manager to open Firefox. Explorer.exe has an application error once i boot Windows XP Home. Therefore, I have to count on Task Manager.
At times, this happens to my other programs too.
I installed WinXP Pro on a 2nd "Windows" directory and tried copying explorer.exe to XP Home... no good. It must be the registry. I have Registry Mechanic and it found over 1300 things... wow. But that isn't helping me out. Please help!
You might have to reinstall the OS.
Save all important files, backup registry, etc.
Then reinstall.
go into your bios (the POST screen should tell you what key for 'bios' or 'setup' ... you need to hit this key immediately after hearing the 'beep'.
in the bios menu, find the section for boot priority. give your cdrom drive first access. put your xp home cd into the drive and reboot. at the POST screen, you will hear the cdrom spin up and see the message 'hit any key to boot from cd'. do so.
run the system recovery. this will reinstall xp home over the top of itself, leaving the rest of the file system intact. assuming this works and you can boot to windows normally afterwards, you will need to run all your windows updates from scratch.