Can someone enlighten me?

[jayxii]

Hi all,

Recently, I turned my computer off and left it off overnight. When I
turned it back on, I got a message saying that the cmos battery was
dead - no big deal. I went to radio shack bought a new one and
installed it. Now, this is where it gets weird. After loading windows
again, and trying to go into one of the user accounts, the explorer bar
doesn't come up for some time. When it and the desktop finally load,
the bar is offscreen, and none of the tasks you run are displayed on
it. I've tried running system restore to fix the problem, but I get a
message saying that the service isn't running and I should restart my
computer to start it. Restarting in normal or safe mode produces the
same results - the long load and system restore not working. I've
expended all of my knowledge. I've tried uninstalling SP2 hoping that
would rollback the system, but I get an error saying "the system cannot
find the file specified". Does anyone have any ideas? This is a new one
to me, and I've found no solution yet. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Could you explain in more detail what it is you're referring to? There are
five Explorer bars - Search, Favorites, Media, History and Folders - and
neither has 'tasks you run displayed on them'.

Could you be referring to the Start menu (what you see when you click on the
Start button)?

 

[jayxii]

I'm sorry
Yes, I'm referring to the start menu bar.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

It's actually called the Start menu (no 'bar') and there are several viruses
that cause the Start menu and the Taskbar (which usually runs along the
bottom of your display) to disappear. So your first order of business is to
check for viruses and other forms of malware (spyware, etc.)

 

[jayxii]

i ran a contingent of virus scans and adware/malware scans after my
original posting. i run bitdefender on it, and it actually still
worked. everything came up normal from its scan and from the panda
online scan i did.

 

[Nog]

Hi all,

Recently, I turned my computer off and left it off overnight. When I
turned it back on, I got a message saying that the cmos battery was
dead - no big deal. I went to radio shack bought a new one and
installed it. Now, this is where it gets weird. After loading windows
again, and trying to go into one of the user accounts, the explorer bar
doesn't come up for some time. When it and the desktop finally load,
the bar is offscreen, and none of the tasks you run are displayed on
it. I've tried running system restore to fix the problem, but I get a
message saying that the service isn't running and I should restart my
computer to start it. Restarting in normal or safe mode produces the
same results - the long load and system restore not working. I've
expended all of my knowledge. I've tried uninstalling SP2 hoping that
would rollback the system, but I get an error saying "the system cannot
find the file specified". Does anyone have any ideas? This is a new one
to me, and I've found no solution yet. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

When you took your computer apart to change the cmos battery you must have
upset your video card or your video settings in bios were wrong. With your
stuff showing up off screen I don't think it had anything to do with your
software....but now you have that all frigged up too.
Take it to someone who knows what they are doing. You need to check all the
bios settings first since the rom was wiped when the battery went dead.

 

[ANONYMOUS]

You also need to load default settings of BIOS if you don't know the
exact ones that were before the battery was changed! By removing the
battery, bios settings have been disturbed and so default needs to be
loaded.

 

[jayxii]

i know for a fact that i did not disturb my video card. i know what i'm
doing - i built the thing. this is just a weird situation. i've also
just noticed that none of the processes are running under a user name.
not even when i log in under admin.