so i installed vista on a separate partition...wanted to experiment with it a bit.

for the past week all was working well, but just today i tried to bootup XP and it would get to the desktop, and load excruciatingly slow. The mouse works, i can click icons and they will highlight, but that is it. i cannot access the start menu, so i cant really search for the problem....does anybody have a solution? thanks

^^that was actually my post...he was logged in on my computer earlier.....but anywho, anyone think they can give me a solution?

there is a folder that you can remove to fix that...

the_reverend said:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\

i should have seen that one coming a mile away :P

check msconfig and see if anything is set to startup that probably doesn't need to be

DeRtOxIa said:

that would be the first thing id do if i could get the start menu working

ctrl+alt+del and get into task manager. see if explorer.exe is running. If it is, terminate it. Then click file>new task and find explorer.exe in C:/windows. This should recreate the explorer process and you should see your desktop.

Yup. Dertoxia is right. Kill explorer and restart it. It sounds like it took a shit. And I doubt Vista on the other partition has anything to do with the XP problem. Windows tends to rot after awhile and slows down it would seem.

cool, i'll give it a shot when i get home

If that doesn't work, delete system32.

menstrual_sweatpants_disco said:

ha, no it worked famously....system32 gets to stay :P

Damn!