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Admittedly, I was doing some dumb stuff and tampered with system32 files for theming purposes (I remember renaming a couple of files like shellstyle.dll and explorer. If anyone wants to know exactly what I did I followed the instructions for oldnewexplorer: https://www.filehorse.com/download-oldnewexplorer/). After I did so my pc was working fine until I noticed FireFox would refuse to open, so I restarted my PC and was greeted to a blank screen.
I tried the ctrl+alt+del method to open command prompt and nothing happened. The mouse seems to be flickering the loading wheel.
I tried opening recovery mode and did a restore point which also did nothing. Recovery mode also said it couldn't diagnose any problems because it couldn't connect to a network. When I tried to connect it to Wi-Fi, it said failed to connect.
I am extremely stumped and also stressed. I would like any possible way to fix this without wiping my files!
Hi!
The restore didn't work because it doesn't restore files that were manually renamed.
The safest option is to rename the files back to their original names. Do you remember exactly which files were renamed?
You will need to enter Recovery Mode > Command Prompt again, run the commands below in the terminal, and send me the results:
dir D:\Windows\explorer*
dir D:\Windows\System32\shellstyle*
I tried both commands and it returned with "File Not Found". I have a C drive and not a D drive so I tried it with C and it gave the same thing.
Thanks! I made a mistake—sorry about that. It uses the letter C, but since you’ve already tested it, you can ignore that. Sometimes, within WinRE, the system might be assigned a different drive letter. Use the command below to confirm if the system is still using C: in WinRE:
dir c:
- You should see the Windows, Program Files, and Users folders, etc. If they don't appear, replace C with D and check if the Windows folders show up. Also, try testing with the letters E and F.
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