I am unable to open 'My Documents'. I have performed a number of maintenance operations. I ran hijack this but need help with log...obviously.

Hi & welcome to PCHF

This type of problem could literally be caused by anything (well, nearly anything). Your HJT log looks clean from the quick read I gave it. I think the best course of action for you would be to perform a "Clean boot"

The full instructions are here for you: Windows XP Clean Boot

Let us know how it goes and of course come back if you need help with the process or anything as a consequence

Okay. I performed a clean boot. As far as I can tell, the purpose was to tell me if my problem was in the Process System.ini File or the Process WIN.ini File. Regardless, the clean boot did not solve my problem. I was still unable to open my documents after the clean boot.

I contacted Dell customer service (as a last resort) and they had me see if I could open 'My Documents' in safe mode - I couldn't. They also had me do something similar to the clean boot...I had to disable all of my startup programs. That didn't work either. Their next suggestion was to reinstall windows. I really don't want to have to do that.

I really appreciate all your help on this...any more suggestions?

Can you browse to it? as in c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\My Documents

If you can i would suggest copying the files out of there into another direcory, then right click on my documents, click properties and then move and select the new folder. When asked if u want to copy everything, click No.

It sounds like it could be a profile issue, if that doesn't resolve it try creating a new user and logging on as them, this will creat a new my documents folder, if u create it with admin privileges you should be able to copy from the old user's my documents into your new one.

hope that helps

Without knowing exactly what to do next, I set out to begin the process of reinstalling Windows XP. First I had to backup my files (something which would have been helpful to probably do in the first place but was never done). I inserted the XP disk and cannot open it. Part of my 'inability to open my documents' is that I can't really open and explore any drive. Which means that I can't open my D drive to get the reinstallation process started.

If it inspires anyone just a little bit more to come up with a creative solution to my problem, I'll let you know that I am about 5 days away from graduating college and some of my graduation requirements rely on the documents stored on my hard drive. I know, I know...I'm screwed.

BTW, I've tried browsing it (as Mort suggested). No good. I can physically view "My Computer" and such but when I try to open "My documents" or anything else contained there - I get the "windows explorer must shut down, would you like to send an error report, etc." message and my computer freezes/lags a little bit.


Thanks for the suggestion though.

Have you run any antivirus software on the computer, and it might be worth running something like Regclean to fix any registry errors.

Try the following and see whether it crashes explorer
Click on START --- RUN and type "c:\documents and settings\" and then press ENTER

Let us know if your system crashes.

Also try and clear the TEMP files on your machine