Hi... Hope someone can help me... On my daughter's hp4450, she had deleted some files and couldn't get online. It runs win98 so I went into dos and run scanreg to go back a few days to see if this would help. What ever setting I got is now causing the desktop to be completely empty. No taskbar, no icons, winkey won't bring up anything,just a generic hp wallpaper.Any way to undo my undo? I have a win98 startup disk but have had no success with it. If I ctl-alt-del the only things in the close box are msgloop and msg32, systray and explorer are gone.When it does boot up I get an error message for explorer... invalid fault. That's all the info I know to give about this problem. Hope Its not a total lost??

Well, probably the fastest way to fix this would just to reinstall windows. You should have gotten OEM recovery discs with your computer, and you can use those to return your installation to the condition it was in when you bought the computer.

If you don't have the discs, I think you can order them from HP. Try the tech support line.

Keep watching this thread, maybe someone else can provide some more help. :)

~psi42

Oh boy, krazykat, this problem is going to take some work to restore the desktop settings. Carol at this site has a way...  

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/r1042788572

But it only works half the time... the best thing and most quick way like psi43 says, is to re-install WIN 98 or WIN98 SE, depending on which version you now have in your computer. Just remember to use the exact version of WIN 98 that is on your computer, because they are different from each other.

Use WIN98 or WIN98 SE CD disk, if you have it, and re-install it over the WIN 98 in your computer. It doesn't matter if your computer came pre-installed with it, such as with a COMPAQ or HP PC, for example.  This type of pre-bundled PC is known as OEM (or ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURER). The only thing missing after you've re-installed a stand-alone WIN98 or WIN98 SE CD disk IS the logo label of the computer company's, such as that of COMPAQ, HP, or DELL, listed with WIN98 or WIN98 SE logo at the point before the desktop loads.
But this is a minor thing.

As long as you re-installed WIN 98 or WIN98 SE on top of the WIN 98 version in your PC now, things should be back to normal.  In fact, I recently had to do this to one of my customer's computer, and the desktop icons, EXPLORER , and everything else is back to normal.

As a reminder, choose the correct WIN 98 version that is now in your computer---either WIN 98 or WIN 98 SE.
There should be a label outside on your computer case that tells you which WIN 98 version is in your computer now--WIN 98 or WIN 98SE, or check the manual that came with this computer. Also, you can go to the computer's company website and find out the specs of the computer that includes the WIN 98 version in it. The website will ask you to type in the model and serial # to identify this computer.

A stand-alone WIN 98 CD should be less than $100. Yes, buy it if you have to.. it''s well worth the headache and peace of mind... :D ;D