Hosea

I'm attempting to upgrade from win98 to winxp os. during install explorer.exe couldn't be copied from install cd. no other problems occurred,,after completion and login, loading of settings, a blue screen appeared with pointer and no icons,,,typed cntrl-alt-dlt and task manager appeared,,,so system is functioning and not frozen or crashed,,, loaded recovery console from cd to expand explorer.ex_ file but access was denied,,I think because of the "R" attribute. How can I get to a successful install and icons w/taskbar to appear?