Hi all,

Since March 19, 2010, a lot of my clients Windows XP desktop icons missing,
everything disappears, including their Start Button and Taskbar, just only
left client's backgroud picture when they login to windows. I fixed it by
asking clients to reboot the computer.

Any body know what happened recently? Is it because windows update?

Thanks a lot.

--qq

=?Utf-8?B?cXE=?= <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:0E5C21EE-0BAF-401A-963E-(E-Mail Removed):

> Hi all,
>
> Since March 19, 2010, a lot of my clients Windows XP desktop icons
> missing, everything disappears, including their Start Button and
> Taskbar, just only left client's backgroud picture when they login
> to windows. I fixed it by asking clients to reboot the computer.
>
> Any body know what happened recently? Is it because windows
> update?
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> --qq
>

Usually this means that Explorer crashed.

A quicker recovery is:

Alt-Ctrl-Del -> Task Manager -> "Applications" (Tab) -> New Task ->
"Explorer"

If it happens a lot, try running a "chkdsk" on the hard drive.

HTH,
John

On Apr 9, 3:04*pm, qq <q...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Since March 19, 2010, a lot of my clients Windows XP desktop icons missing,
> everything disappears, including their Start Button and Taskbar, just only
> left client's backgroud picture when they login to windows. I fixed it by
> asking clients to reboot the computer.
>
> Any body know what happened recently? Is it because windows update?
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> --qq

This is a popular symptom of a malware infection. It is not a popular
symptom of Windows updates.

You need to get your desktop working, then you can resolve your
potential malware issue.

From your background image, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and open Task Manager.

Look at the Processes tab and if the explorer.exe process is not
running, launch it.

Click File, New Task and in the box enter:

%windir%\explorer.exe

Click OK and see if you get your desktop back.

If explorer.exe is already running, it is likely the object of the
affliction and may need to be replaced (not hard).

It explorer.exe is running, End the Process anyway and launch a new
one as indicated above so you can get the desktop working, then:

Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining
issues:

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

They can be uninstalled later if desired.

On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:05:45 -0700 (PDT), Jose <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:


> Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
> detection programs:
>
> Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
> SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/


I agree. Those are the two best anti-spyware programs.


> They can be uninstalled later if desired.


But I disagree with that. They should be kept and run periodically as
a safeguard measure.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
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