desktop icons and start bar won't appear

[sbpatel92004]

i have xp proffesional. i was cleaning up my pc and when restarted it
the desktop icons and start bar dissappeared and internet explorer and
window explorer don't work not even through task maager (i get
flickering then it goes). i have to use the task manger to open up
programs. can someone plz help i think i might have deleted something.

 

[Rock]

i have xp proffesional. i was cleaning up my pc and when restarted it
the desktop icons and start bar dissappeared and internet explorer and
window explorer don't work not even through task maager (i get
flickering then it goes). i have to use the task manger to open up
programs. can someone plz help i think i might have deleted something.

What exactly did you do in this "clean up"? Have you tried system restore
to restore to a date right before the clean up? To get to system restore go
to Start | Help and Support and on the menu line choose system restore.

 

[Guest]

What exactly did you do in this "clean up"? Have you tried system restore
to restore to a date right before the clean up? To get to system restore go
to Start | Help and Support and on the menu line choose system restore.

Well that wouldn't help as it has been stated that the start menu is
inaccessable although I can guess that the "clean up" has either disabled
(from start up) or deleated explorer.exe which is the main GUI and has to be
running for the start menu, taskbar and desktop icons to show.
The thing to do is to check what processes are running in task manager at
the time if the file I've stated isn't running then start a new process
called explorer.exe and if it states that the file can't be found then the
"clean up" has probably deleated it and at best you'll have to do a repair
install but if everything does show up then run msconfig (I hope that is the
right programme) and make sure that explorer.exe runs at start up

 

[Rock]

Well that wouldn't help as it has been stated that the start menu is
inaccessable although I can guess that the "clean up" has either disabled
(from start up) or deleated explorer.exe which is the main GUI and has to
be
running for the start menu, taskbar and desktop icons to show.
The thing to do is to check what processes are running in task manager at
the time if the file I've stated isn't running then start a new process
called explorer.exe and if it states that the file can't be found then the
"clean up" has probably deleated it and at best you'll have to do a repair
install but if everything does show up then run msconfig (I hope that is
the
right programme) and make sure that explorer.exe runs at start up

Ack yes that wasn't very good advice.

To the OP, System Restore can be run though even if Start isn't accessible.
Open task manager, click on Applications, then New Task. The command line
for running SR is c:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe.

 

[mutant carrot]

i've tried system restore and it doesn't work. and by clean up i meant
that i was deleting some old files. and when i try to run explorer.exe
in task manager i get a flicker of the startbar and it goes away again.
i've already done several virus and spyware scans.

 

[Rock]

i've tried system restore and it doesn't work. and by clean up i meant
that i was deleting some old files. and when i try to run explorer.exe
in task manager i get a flicker of the startbar and it goes away again.
i've already done several virus and spyware scans.

Do a repair install. See this link. You'll need to go to windows update
after and install all the updates again.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm