I'm having a real issue with my Dell Inspiron 3501. Every time I try to boot it up, I get an error that says 'Explorer.exe The specified path does not exist.' Sometimes the screen goes completely black with just the cursor showing, and at other times, the screen flickers back and forth. My taskbar isn't working, and while I can open Chrome, it's super slow. I was messing around with my environment variables since pip wasn't working, but I don't think that caused this issue. I was using Visual Studio Code to bulk download images from a YouTube tutorial, which involved changing some files and directories. One of the steps asked me to install a Chrome driver, but I'm not sure if that's related. I can open 'This PC' from the desktop, but trying to open other folders doesn't work. After restarting my PC, it led to all these problems. Just a note, I have Windows installed on both my HDD and an SSD, but these issues only happen when booting from the SSD. The HDD works fine. Any advice?
1 Answer
It sounds like you might have gotten some malware or a virus from that Chrome driver installation, which could be causing the issues with your taskbar and file explorer. I’d suggest backing up all your important files and then doing a complete Windows reinstall. Even if you try to repair Windows, I wouldn’t trust that it’s fully clean afterward. Here's a guide on how to reinstall: [link].
But isn't Chromedriver safe if you get it from the official site? It’s primarily used for automation, so it shouldn't be a virus unless the source is sketchy.