Repair XP

[fatboyjim]

OK, my PC is acting a little screwy (think I may have had a virus or two) and explorer.exe sometimes crashes out when I open folders

I'm wondering if a Repair install of XP might put things right

But what exactly does a repair do? What will I lose through doing this? (Programs, startup settings, registry keys?)

Cheers

Jim

[HAL9000]

Repair will delete the system files and replace them, but will not cause you to lose any programs or data.

[ktkendall]

No you won't loose anything but if you have a virus then it probably won't fix that either. You can do an online virus scan thru trendmicro's site, or symantec's website, and perhaps it's spyware that is messing things up for U...

[fatboyjim]

Sorry perhaps I didn't word things quite right

Basically I may have had a couple of viruses and spyware etc etc, sorted them all out but my computer is a bit screwy at the moment (Explorer crashes)

If it deletes all system files and replaces them it's worth a go, thanks for the explanation and the comments

I'll give it a go and get back to you :P

[crjdriver]

Any service packs, patches, hot fixes, dx updates, etc. will need to be reapplied.

[fatboyjim]

Yup just noticed that

Luckily I downloaded the redist versions of most things (XPSP1 and DirectX)

Rather strangely, the repair didn't seem to remove SP1, it seemed to almost corrupt it forcing re-installation of the SP. examples including me not being able to get onto the internet because it detected my modem but wouldn't let me use it and also there were a few error messages here and there about system restore and rundll32.exe

All sorted now though, thanks for all of your help

Jim