Windows 7: AtBroker.exe, Explorer.exe failed to start

When I boot up my laptop, I get a place to type in my password. Then I get a black screen with only a pointer, and two error messages.



Atbroker.exe failed to start and Explorer.exe failed to start

I do Control+Alt+Delete and click Task Manager, and get another error:

Task manager failed to start.

This also happenes in safe mode. I need to replace Shell32.dll, but I can't open C:\Windows\System32 to open it.

Please help!!!!

The problem seems to be with CA Antivirus falsely quarantining shell32.dll. If you can't seem to boot into either safe mode or regular mode, there are a few other options.

1) Do a Repair Install with the system disc (probably the easiest solution)
2) Use the system disc to boot to a command prompt, run SFC /scannow, and hope it finds and fixes shell32.dll
3) Remove your hard drive, mount it to another machine, so you can replace shell32.dll
4) Use a linux boot disc to access the files and replace shell32.dll

1) I only have the OEM install disc.
2) I don't have CA antivirus, but I will try that anyway.
3) I can only replace Shell32.dll in the system32 folder, not sysWOW64 because of permissons (already tried).
4) More detail, please.

I have Kaspersky PURE installed. I opened Safe Mode with command promt and typed "control" to open control panel. "control could not start" was in a dialog box.

Thanks, I will post if this works. I can post from my iPad, it won't even open iexplore.exe on my laptop.

I did the SFC /scannow and it said it corrected corrupted files. I did CTRL+ALT+DELETE and rebooted. It works! thanks so much!

Sweet! Congrats.

I was having the Black Screen of Death with mouser pointer and realised through Event Viwer (eventvwr.msc) that the explorer.exe crash was associated to the propsys.dll located in windows\system32 folder.

So, I managed to emulate a mini WinXP via Hiren's Boot, loaded a "health" propsys.dll from my other Windows 7 system and overwrote the corrupted one. Problem solved to me!