Hello.
I read the "how to" for posts that you provided and I will provide as much
information as I can but this is not my computer, it's my dad's. It also
states to start a new post but since there are so many posts started with
similar to exact situations, I believe it would be easier to just post as a
reply.
I do not have a "blank" screen because my dad has a wallpaper (I hope that
is correct because I also know there's a "background") but anyway...
He has windows xp home edition and there are no icons, no taskbar and
clicking on the desktop area does not do anything. If you try to run
%systemroot% explorer.exe, or "system tray" exc. from the "new task" it will
pop-up the task bar but does not last more than a milli-second.
I have ran a repair install and a clean install. I have also tried to scan
for spyware and virus scan. I have tried safe mode and last night I could get
into safe mode but it was only a blank black screen today it will not even
make it to safe mode, it stops on the loading of the "files"- I'm not sure
what these files are and did not write an example of them down but it looks
like a list of windows files as they are loaded.
I cannot say when this first occurred and what site someone was on; my neice
was on the computer and no one knows where she was, she states that she was
only im-ing friends from AIM. (Not sure if that's it and she's just worried
about getting in trouble)
This appears to be a "boot-up" problem (from talking to a tech support rep.
at school) and nothing shows in the applications windows when first logging
on.
I have also tried a selective start up as described in some of the other
forum posts by selecting "selective startup" unchecking process system.ini
file, process win.ini file, load startup items. That did not help so then I
went back to normal startup.
I have been working on this since last night but I think I have pretty much
covered what I have tried. (I have basically tried whatever I could from the
posts that I have read "here" and whatever I have known from working with
other problems.)
Speaking of problems there has been no "error" pop-ups except one that said
it was unable to complete operation...this was last night and I'm not sure I
can tell you what triggered that (don't remember what I was doing at the
time) but I think it was basically telling me there was something wrong with
the booting.