my computer won't open any program

[katja]

I've tried that but it doesn't work. Btw, is it normal that explorer.exe takes about 70.000 K (I see that when I open processes in task manager)? So, I guess I have to reinstall OS... Will I lose all my data? What is the difference between reinstalling OS and formatting disk and than installing OS?

[Raptor]

If you reinstall your operating system, you'll end up with more problems than you started with. You overwrite system files and will most likely cause Windows to not boot.

Formatting means you erase all your data from the hard drive. Which is the best option if you want to have an entirely fresh start.

If you are using Windows XP, you can look into the Repair console.

[sdf]

hey i might be too late, not that mine is very important  but   yes it sounds stupid but i have had c and p not work before also.  however,  ctrl+c and ctrl+v did the trick

[Mac]

Using two anti-virus programs can cause problems with conflicts. I would uninstall Norton and add Zone Alarm free firewall.

Then you could do an on-line scan from Trend-Micro.

Are you using SpyBot SD, AdAware SE & SpywareBlaster to keep your system Trojan free?

How big is your drive and what size are the C: & D: partitions?

Is the D: drive empty? If so right-click on your documents folder and select to move it to drive D: if it will.

Then you can do a fresh install of XP and slipstream SP2 into the files from your old XP CD to make an .ISO image with which to burn a NEW XP+SP2 installation CD so that you get a cleaner installation. I use AutoStreamer 1·0 to do the job, an excellent bit of freeware.

So order your free SP2 Service Pack CD from Microsoft before you do the installation. Well worth it as a new XPSP2 from MS is US$299.

I only use AVG & Zone Alarm on XP Professional and I have not had a problem so far.

I use an 8·0Gb (8192Mb) drive for the Operating System and programs and run the paging file in its own 1·5Gb (1530Mb) partition.

A different strategy is to make an 8192Mb C: drive, and use the rest of the drive for documents (D: ) to the nearest Gigabyte (Like 50Gb = 50 x 1024Mb) and put the paging file at the end of the drive in the leftover 2·0Gb (E: ) or less space.

With your documents on yiur present D: drive you could use NERO BackitUp to make a copy for re-installation later and do a temporary off-line install to your current C: drive just to get the burning done before re-partitioning and re-installing properly.

Whan you re-format, if you format directly to NTFS you get optimised 4096 byte clusters and an unfragmented Master File Table so you should get better performance all round.

You can also opt to install the Recovery Console as soon as you get on-line. See: Help and Support on your start menu for installation instructions for putting the Recovery Console on to your HDD.