Maximus Arcade ignoring all inputs (then works fine after restarting program)

[Kokapetl]

I've set up my arcade to boot straight into Maximus from tinyXP (no explorer being loaded either, I've replaced Maximus as the shell through registry edit).
Everything looks like it works fine, except Maximus won't respond to anything - no JPAC, no keyboard, nothing. Then, if I ctr-alt-del to kill Maximus, then open it up again.. it all works fine.

I have a feeling that this might all be because I've disabled explorer, but I really don't want explorer.exe running in the background if I don't have to.
Anyone else seen this / have an idea how to avoid it?

[Kokapetl]

I haven't had time to investigate, so the problem still stands. Just been on holiday and was hoping for a response!
Will post back if I figure it out.

[SuperXero]

What happens if you ctrl+shift+esc to open task manager, go to file, run, and type in explorer.exe.  After explorer boots, does MA then start to respond?  (leave MA open the whole time)

[Kokapetl]

My hard drive died, so I'm doing a fresh install anyway.
I had tried opening up explorer and it still didn't respond - the only thing that seemed to work was closing and re-opening MA.

Thanks for the reply