I had a problem with adware/malware today and used Microsoft AntiSpyware to
get rid of it. I had to reboot, and when I did I got error 0xc0000022,
explorer.exe failed to initialize. I looked up the error msg, and Microsoft
says it is a file permission problem. Trouble is, it comes up at startup and
I have no way of interacting with windows. I get no icons, no start menu,
etc... How can I get around this?

BTW, I am running Windows XP SP2.

That would be Windows XP Home Edition, sorry

I tried to bring up the task manager by Ctrl+Shift+Esc, it said "Task Manager
has been disabled by your administrator. I am the administrator (since it's
just my home computer.) I don't know how to change permission without being
in Windows. This is not fun.

Try booting into Safe Mode, Safe Mode with command prompt, or last known
good [doubtful but always worth a try] configuration to see if any of those
work or help. If you can get to command prompt see if you can use regedit
and change the registry key in the first link below to see if that allows
you access to Task Manager. Note that if you see other registry entries
under the Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies \ key that these can
also be restricting your access and you may try to delete them.

You can also use command line tool such as cacls to view change folder/file
permissions if you know what needs to be changed. Beyond that you may need
to try an upgrade/repair installation that may require that you first
install your service pack [if not included on the install disk] and then go
to Windows Updates to download and install needed critical security updates.

An upgrade/repair install may or may not fix your problem and would be a
last resort to a new install of the operating system. You can always access
your data or even edit the registry if need be by a parallel install of the
operating system, putting your hard drive in another computer as a
slave/secondary drive, or booting from something like Bart's PE before doing
a new install or installing the new operating system to the same folder as
the existing one without doing a format but you will have to reinstall your
applications. --- Steve

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kba...XPHomePro.html
http://www.ss64.com/nt/cacls.html -- cacls syntax
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;315341 --- XP
upgrade repair install and you may need your product key

"Kurt Arndorfer" <KurtArndorfer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E67E6A0D-359C-478B-BBC1-2F72154DAD09@microsoft.com...
>I tried to bring up the task manager by Ctrl+Shift+Esc, it said "Task
>Manager
> has been disabled by your administrator. I am the administrator (since
> it's
> just my home computer.) I don't know how to change permission without
> being
> in Windows. This is not fun.