No desktop, start menu, or taskbar displayed on startup

[Guest]

Hello Everyone,

After i used a program today on my laptop, the laptop just decided to shut
down and restart by itself. When I was able to start it in safe mode, it
checked the files and folders, and found some bad clusters. The lost files
were converted to files, and free space was checked (it ran very slow).

When this was finished, the Windows XP logo was displayed. After the
Windows XP logo was displayed, the computer is just sitting there flashing
the hard drive light, shows my mouse pointer arrow and that is it. I have no
start menu, taskbar, desktop wallpaper or desktop icons.

My computer has Windows XP home edition SP2 and Trend Micro Antivirius on a
20 gig hard drive. The antivirius was updated the other day, no virius
detected with real time scan on. Windows XP firewall was turned on. Any
suggestions?

 

[Galen]

In Matt M had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hello Everyone,

After i used a program today on my laptop, the laptop just decided to
shut down and restart by itself. When I was able to start it in safe
mode, it checked the files and folders, and found some bad clusters.
The lost files were converted to files, and free space was checked
(it ran very slow).

When this was finished, the Windows XP logo was displayed. After the
Windows XP logo was displayed, the computer is just sitting there
flashing the hard drive light, shows my mouse pointer arrow and that
is it. I have no start menu, taskbar, desktop wallpaper or desktop
icons.

My computer has Windows XP home edition SP2 and Trend Micro
Antivirius on a 20 gig hard drive. The antivirius was updated the
other day, no virius detected with real time scan on. Windows XP
firewall was turned on. Any suggestions?

Missing Icons and Taskbar:
http://kgiii.info/windows/XP/general/missing_desktop-icons_taskbar.html

I haven't been to that page in a while (sadly it is mine) but it may just
need to be done once - as in you might not need to restore.

Go in, follow the directions - except the restore part at first - and then
just do a normal shutdown and restart. That /usually/ gets it all fixed up.

When that is done here's a fun way to generally prevent that from happening
again:

Explorer as a Separate Process:
http://kgiii.info/windows/XP/tips/sep_explorer.html

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/ http://kgiii.info/

"Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and
its solution is its own reward." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[Guest]

Hello Galen,

When I try to follow your directions, I can't even do step 1, Ctrl, Alt, and
Del has NO effect! Doing this several times also has no effect.

 

[Galen]

In Matt M had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hello Galen,

When I try to follow your directions, I can't even do step 1, Ctrl,
Alt, and Del has NO effect! Doing this several times also has no
effect.

Ah, alright. The next step is to try rebooting. When it is starting (before
any part of Windows starts to display) keep pressing the F8 key over and
over again. This should bring up a special menu, in that menu select "last
known good configuration" and if that too doesn't work then you'll next want
to try restoring the OS which you can HOPEFULLY get to by selecting safe
mode at that same screen the next time you boot.

Safe Mode:
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/safemode.html

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/ http://kgiii.info/

"Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and
its solution is its own reward." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[Guest]

I tried the restore from last known good configuration in safe mode, nothing
happens. I know I had the restore feature turned on when my system was
working.

 

[Galen]

In Matt M had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I tried the restore from last known good configuration in safe mode,
nothing happens. I know I had the restore feature turned on when my
system was working.

Before I say go with a repair install... (Links included.)

Repair Installation of XP:
http://kgiii.info/windows/XP/general/xprepair.html

Log on, last known good, and create a new profile... Then see if you can
logon to that profile and manage from there? You'll want some additional
info IF that works so...

Corrupt Profile:
http://kgiii.info/windows/XP/general/corrupt_profile.html

That is IF it works - if not then you'll really end up doing a repair
install.

Digression:

I dislike restore, I've said it countless times (though you probably didn't
hear any of them) because it doesn't do what people expect it to do. It does
what it does - and does it well (I'd turn it BACK on if I were you - when
you get this fixed) - but it doesn't do what most people think it does.
However it will save your bacon when a restore fails (and a restore will
save your data when you don't want to do a bare metal restore) so it is
worth using as a method to recover - just not to backup.

Backup! Image/Clone:
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/advanced/image-clone.html

Anyhow, I'll not digress further today, that's just some food for thought.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/ http://kgiii.info/

"Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and
its solution is its own reward." - Sherlock Holmes