Windows Explorer Crashing on Close and Now Not Working At All

[maniacbob]

So for a while I've fighting with Windows Explorer
Whenever I have a window open and I close it, Explorer completely crashes and I have to re-initialize it
At first I thought it was a hard drive problem because my computer had been packed because I was doing some editing work for a friend of mine's movie and the raw footage was clogging up my computer but I finished and deleted it and ran defrag but I was still suffering from the same problem
After trying to fix it and finding no help elsewhere on the internet I decided to try and replace Explorer
So I downloaded and installed a trial version of Directory Opus which worked fine, did everything I wanted for about 3 weeks (was a 30 day trial) but then I ran into trouble yesterday, Directory Opus was giving me an error I was missing a .dll which was crashing it
Therefore I decided to uninstall it, went into Add/Remove Programs because the start menu didn't show a Uninstall option, and got rid of Directory Opus

Things seemed fine, I'll just fight with Windows Explorer a little longer I can handle that
Wrong
I can't open any folders now
I had set Directory Opus to open all my folders and apparently when that was uninstalled it wasn't set back to Windows Explorer
I can Explore a folder but thats a pain and means opening another window to navigate through that folder
When I open a folder it asks me which program I want to use and I've tried finding Windows Explorer but I don't see it anywhere

Can somebody please help me with either of these problems?

[caperjack]

with the windows cd in the disk drive go to start /run , type in "sfc /scannow " with out the "" and there is a space between c and / .
this is system file checker ,it will replace missing or corrupt windows system files ,might help with the problem .
if that don't help with the winxp cd in the drive reboot windows to the cd and go to recovery console ,go "R" for repair and type in "chkdsk /r" again with out the " you may have to go into the bios to change the boot order to cdrom as first boot.

[bobbyraw]

run a windows update on you pc

[caperjack]

stares with blank look on face!!