No taskbar & No desktop icons

[Guest]

I am intermittently getting the situation where there is no taskbar or
desktop icons.

Right clicking the desktop -- no response.

Task Manager will show running applications which can be made visible by
right clicking and 'maximise' or 'switch to' .

LOGO+E brings up an explorer window -- I assume this is equivalent to 'new
task' (in task manager ) and typing explorer.exe - but i haven't tried that
yet.

I am reduced to shutting down via the power-off button! Restarting brings
back sanity!

I am running Defender and Norton AV. Auto update is enabled.

Any suggestions how to recover the task bar and desktop under these
conditions would be much appreciated.

 

[Guest]

register these system files from the run command line

REGSVR32 /i SHELL32.DLL
REGSVR32 /i BROWSEUI.DLL

reboot - these files will rebuild/repair your desktop shell

Failing this my advice would be to back up all critical data and rebuild or
repair with an xp boot disc

 

[Guest]

Thanks "Nanny" for the advice which I have followed . But since the problem
is intermittent ,I will have to wait and see .

I would really like to understand how the system gets into the condition and
to be able to recover without rebooting .

I am actually planning to do a full XP reinstallation in the near future and
retain a cloned system disc of the "clean" system. It will be interesting to
see how long after the cleanup the problem re-occurs.