DJK(John) Robinson
djkr at msn.com
Wed Feb 2 14:41:12 CST 2005
I have an old PC running Win2000 (fully up-to-date) and looking after my ADSL connection, running firewall, centralised anti-virus updates, etc. Occasionally something else, but mostly just these essentials. PC is on all the time, typically two weeks between reboots. It's suddenly become unhelpful - 1. trying to run programs via Start gives "Windows Explorer Unable to run this command" 2. Winkey+E (shortcut to run Explorer): "Access to the specified device, path, or file is denied." (I'm running as Administrator.) 3. Double-clicking on a file to invoke the associated program: no effect at all. (eg .txt to run notepad) 4. Very few system things in the Control Panel work: most give symptom 2 or 3 above. It's not just shortcuts, either. Locate notepad.exe itself and double click: nothing. BUT Winkey+R (to Run something) works fine! Explorer and all the rest - IF you know what to type in the Run window, eg compmgmt.msc /s Everything works OK in itself: I just can't run anything the normal way. Same after rebooting. And the services are all running fine: ADSL, ZA, Sophos, ... And nothing interesting in the Event Viewer. Did a full virus and spyware scan, to be on the safe side - nothing. Can't find anything useful on MSKB (and it's not Q172223). Just had a quick Google, but nothing useful so far. And no, I don't have a folder call "Program" on my C drive, nor am I trying to play an audio CD, ... Has anyone come across a problem like this? Or have any bright ideas? I strongly prefer to tackle and solve problems than give up and reformat, reinstall, etc. John