Can't access desktop of client pc

[John]

Hi

sbs 2003 premium. I have a peculiar problem with one win xp client pc. After
booting the pc logs in fine then says things like loading settings and
creating network connections etc but as soon as it is about to display the
desktop, icons and task bar; it stops and all we are left is with the
standard blue windows xp desktop background i.e. no icons or task bar or
anything else besides background. Booting in 'Safe Mode with Networking'
also gives the same result and so does login in remotely via RWW.

I can open the computer management for the pc from sbs server and also
browse pc's drive from the server's network places. This leads me to believe
that pc is fairly healthy but don't know what to do form here as I can't
access pc desktop. Any pointers on how to fix this would be appreciated.

Many Thanks

Regards

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

Is IE8 Beta 2 installed, by any chance?

Are any machines running WinXP SP3?

 

[John John (MVP)]

Can you start the Task Manager? Is Explorer.exe running? If not can
you start it from the Task Manager's "New Task" File Menu option?

John

 

[John]

Thanks. No luck repairing though.

I can't remember but I think the last time I saw this I just ran a
repair of the OS.







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[John]

No beta IE8

Just installed IE7 and XP SP3 by Ctrl-Alt-Delete and Task Manager and New
Task and running the relevant setup programs.

Still no luck accessing Task Bar, Start Menu and desktop icons.

Thanks

Regards

 

[John]

I can do Ctrl-Alt-Del to get Task Manager. Explorer is not running. Trying
to run it via New Task makes it appear for split second and then disappear
again.

Thanks

Regards

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

Just installed IE7 and XP SP3 by Ctrl-Alt-Delete and Task Manager and New

Task and running the relevant setup programs.

Huh?

 

[John]

The pc originally had IE6 and xp sp2...after having failed to fix it I
decided to add SP3 and IE7 in case it may help which it did not apparently.

Regards

 

[John John (MVP)]

If Explorer is not running then maybe you should take a look at the
REG_SZ Shell and Userinit values at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

The Data for the Shell value should be Explorer.exe and for the
Userinit value it should be C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,

John

 

[John]

They are fine. I have checked. Even compared the whole winlogin section with
one of the other PCs. Very weird problem this is.

Following errors are coming in System Log of the PC;

Event Type: Error
Event Source: NETLOGON
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5789
Date: 2008-09-09
Time: 19:13:58
User: N/A
Computer: WILLIAM
Description:
Attempt to update DNS Host Name of the computer object in Active Directory
failed. The updated value was 'WILLIAM'. The following error occurred:
The parameter is incorrect.

Data:
0000: 57 00 00 00 W...

AND

Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10005
Date: 2008-09-09
Time: 19:18:01
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer: WILLIAM
Description:
DCOM got error "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled
or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. " attempting to
start the service Iap with arguments "-Service" in order to run the server:
{B0C61A79-0870-4BE4-9153-9CCAF422E31F}

Thanks

Regards

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

Not a wise idea with this ongoing issue, John.

The pc originally had IE6 and xp sp2...after having failed to fix it I
decided to add SP3 and IE7 in case it may help which it did not
apparently.

Regards