Stuck on repair 10 for over 24 hours!

[jlcrogue]

Hi, I accidentally broke my explorer.exe file and now whenever I start my computer or try to manually start explorer.exe I get a "Class not registered" error message. I've tried a lot of different things, I've tried doing a system restore to a previous version of Windows to a few days before I broke it, but my computer refuses to go back to an earlier version of itself, even after I deleted my anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware, etc. I've tried many different solutions offered on Google, but none of the solutions seemed applicable to my situation. I've tried sfc /scannow in the Windows command line, I've tried a few different things in regedit, I've tried recovering my old explorer.exe file, but nothing works. Now I'm trying out Windows Repair v2.10.4 and it has been stuck on repair 10 for over 24 hours now. Here's a link to a screenshot of the repair: http://postimg.org/image/ni1f27iqb/full/

Any help would be much appreciated.

BTW, one thing I need to know right away is should I stop the repair and skip this step or is repair 10 important in fixing explorer.exe, because in the description it says: "This will remove the policies that most infections set. Such as disabling the task manager, hiding the desktop, hijacking any exe that is run and many more." It sounds like since my desktop is hidden that repair 10 would be the solution to my problem, except that repair 10 (as of right now) is taking over 24 hours to complete. Is it stuck? How do I fix this?

[Willy2]

Try the following:
- Run Windows Repair in Safe Mode
- If one repair takes too long (more than say 30 minutes) then abort the program. On my Win 7 system, all repairs combined take about 20 minutes.
- When a repair gets stuck then abort the program and re-run the program but exclude that particular repair.

[jlcrogue]

Try the following:
- Run Windows Repair in Safe Mode
- If one repair takes too long (more than say 30 minutes) then abort the program. On my Win 7 system, all repairs combined take about 20 minutes.
- When a repair gets stuck then abort the program and re-run the program but exclude that particular repair.

I forgot to mention that I tried safe mode. My computer froze while starting up in safe mode (with networking). I'm going to try repairing without repair number 10 in there, but it seems like an important one that I'm going to need. If that doesn't work I'll try running Windows in Safe Mode without networking, but I think it might freeze on me again.

[jlcrogue]

I was able to run my computer in Safe Mode and do all of the repairs, including 10, restarted my computer, but I still have the same problem when starting it up. It still gives me the error message for explorer.exe "Class not registered" and my whole user interface is still missing, all I get is a black screen. I have to run everything from the task manager. I should also mention that when Windows Repair v2.10.4 finished repairing both times it gave me the exact same error message in addition to the program telling me that I need to restart my computer for the repairs to take effect. It seems that the repairs didn't fix explorer.exe, but the program tried to run it again after it finished.

[jlcrogue]

Update: Since trying System Restore in normal mode half a dozen times didn't work I tried a System Restore in Safe Mode and sure enough my computer is back working like normal again! 

Thanks for the suggestion of trying Safe Mode again. I am really relieved that my computer's UI is finally working once again after two grueling days of pure frustration.

[Willy2]

- Good to hear I put you on the right track and got your problem fixed.
- Make a new System Restore Point ASAP. And delete a number of old ones.
- Install Tweaking's Registry Backup. The program is designed to make a copy of the registry upon start up. And RB is much less likely to malfuntion than MS System Restore. And your problem was definitely a problem in the registry.

[Shane]

Sounds like you have something running in normal mode that is really getting in the way of things, my repairs, system restore and such.

Might be a good idea to run some scans on your system if you havent yet

Shane