everything disappears

[Casey]

I have XP Pro. A few times a day, my taskbar will
randomlly disappear along with all my desktop icons. When
everything comes back up (few seconds), some of my system
tray icons are still missing. Is this windows explorer
crashing or what? and how can I fix this?

 

[Larry Samuels]

Hi Casey,

This is caused by explorer.exe crashing.
Try looking at the event viewer to see if you can establish what is causing
the crash or spot a pattern for the crashes.

Are you by any chance running WinMX or a combination of WinMx and
Leechammer?

No recriminations from me for running file sharing software--that is a
decision each person must make on their own.
The reason for the question:
Both programs are notorious for crashing explorer, and are deadly when
Leechammer is allowed to run continuously.

--
Larry Samuels MS-MVP (Windows-Shell/User)
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -
Unofficial FAQ for Windows Server 2003 at
http://pelos.us/SERVER.htm

 

[Guest]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but how would I get
to the event viewer? I don't get any error messages or
anything like that.

All I can tell you is that I'm using XP Pro and have no
file sharing software.

 

[Larry Samuels]

Go to Start/Run
type: "%SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s" without the quotes.
Or navigate to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/ click on Event Viewer

--
Larry Samuels MS-MVP (Windows-Shell/User)
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -
Unofficial FAQ for Windows Server 2003 at
http://pelos.us/SERVER.htm

 

[Casey]

So anything in particular that I should look for?

It just happened after I closed the event log window, so
I went back to check and the only thing at the time it
crashed was winlogon and service control manager.

 

[Casey]

I've noticed it does it every time I close the control
panel window.