No desktop, no icons, no taskbar, nothing... just background picture!

[Joe Black]

Greetings,

A friend of mine has a PC with Windows XP Home. He called me the other day
to help him fix a wierd problem: although Windows do start, and the Welcome
screen comes up, after clicking on a user, all you get is the background
picture and nothing else; no taskbar, no icons, nothing.

I started Task Manger and there were absolutely no applications
running -there were some processes but I didn't write them down. I tried to
start manualy the explorer.exe from within task manager but again nothing
happened.

OK, let's try safe mode. Safe mode starts, click on Administrator icon in
Welcome screen, and nothing! Scheduled a chkdsk check; no problems found.
Start last known good configuration; nothing.

Unfortunately we didn't have the installation CD handy to try the recovery
console (is it even available in Win XP home, or is it available only in Win
XP Pro?). Of course my friend doesn't know|remember what could have caused
this strange behaviour.

Apart from reinstalling Windows, is there anything else we can try to figure
out what could have gone wrong and remedy the problem? Has anyone faced and
delt with this problem?

Thanks in advance

 

[Guest]

We had the same problems a while back and found out that some dll files were missing after deleting a anti-virus program it stole start up files and we had to have the pc flattened and reloaded, i hope this is of some help

 

[Guest]

Youve taken the right approach,usually though the xp cd needs to be available.
As in task mgr,new task,type:cmd when the DOS window opens the next to
type:Sfc /Scannow But that requires the xp cd,recovery would be a try also,
repair,type:CHKDSK C: /R
But again xp cd.The microsoft keyboards have a,my computer button along with
other shrt cuts,if you have similiar try useing.

 

[wayne]

The taskbar might be off the screen Did you try right clicking the desktop
and going to properties-desktop-customize desktop and see if anything is
checked!

Wayne

 

[Joe Black]

Thanks to everyone for their replies.

Andrew E: No Microsoft keyboard, so no "My Documents" key. Chkdsk returned
no errors.

Wayne: Right clicking on the desktop didn't work.

Tom: Running explorer didn't do the trick, so, as lynn wrote, the machine is
off for a reformat and reinstallation... (Has anyone actually tried
reinstalling XP a.k.a. inplace upgrade? What happened to users, their files
and their settings? What about the applications?)

Joe

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem but I have also noticed that in TskMgr explorer.exe is using nearly 100% of resources. I have tried repairing the system using the XP CD but nothing has changed....incidently it seems safe to do this....although it looks like it is doing a fresh installation, all the files and users are not altered. Which, presumably why the problem isn't solved!
I have also found the other users are not effected by this problem which makes it more weird

 

[Guest]

I have encountered the same problem - one of the 3 user accounts has this problem. The other two are fine. I tried uninstalling the last programs installed; ran a spyware checker and a viruscan and nothing seems to do the trick. Anyh other ideas? Thanks

 

[Guest]

I am having the same problem. What do I do. Please help me.

 

[Guest]

My sister had this problem. I used the "System Restore" function and was able to recover everything. Had to log on as another user to access system restore as her page had no start menu or icons etc.
System restore did work, but i found a link between a particular program and the removal of her icons etc.
After i did the restore i tried to remove a third party program that along with gator had made it's way onto the computer with the installation of the intended downloaded program. On deleting this software, the icons had disappeared again.
After this, i created another user account and used this to delete the nasty programs.
I was not able to remove the software without losing her settings. In the end, set up a new account for her and transferred settings across to it, before removing nasty programs and closing her original user account.
Hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

I am having the same darn problem, it happend after a black out in my house.
i can't see anything on my desktop, although i can open the task maneger
i found out there is a strange file in "C: documents and settings/my account(the name of my account)
the file is called "tpt" and it is not a program(turn to "all files"). every time that i erase this file it comes back after a restart. the norton antivirus doesnt find any threat in this dat file
I can open the safe mode but that file doesn't appear in the safe mode
Please check for this file and help me!!!

 

[Guest]

h
i have this on 2 xp home pc's and win98se pc , i can only think to format / reload
if someone finds a proper fix please email me , thanks

 

[Jack]

I haven't found a solution yet.
I guess we will have to keep trying.

 

[Jack]

Go back to the Task Manager/File/New Task and type in
msconfig. On the General Tab choose Expand File.

Or type in CMD:
expand x:\i386\explorer.ex_ c:\windows\explorer.exe
(for x: use the name of the drive where the I386 directory is .)