No Desktop Nor Start Buttons

[Israel Rodriguez]

A friend of mine has a Gateway PC with Windows XP, SP1 installed.
For some reason when she boots up, there's nothing but wallpaper, no icons,
no Start button.
The only way to access any programs is to crtl/alt/del and go into Task
Manager and then select File ! New Task (Run).
I've tried to access control panel, but I get errors saying that Windows is
unable to find explore.exe
Any ideas on how to resolve this would be welcome.

--

Israel Rodriguez

http://www.tehawk.com
http://home.earthlink.net/~tehawk

 

[Galen]

In Israel Rodriguez <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

A friend of mine has a Gateway PC with Windows XP, SP1 installed.
For some reason when she boots up, there's nothing but wallpaper, no
icons, no Start button.
The only way to access any programs is to crtl/alt/del and go into
Task Manager and then select File ! New Task (Run).
I've tried to access control panel, but I get errors saying that
Windows is unable to find explore.exe
Any ideas on how to resolve this would be welcome.

First try running, simply, "explorer.exe" without the quotes. If it brings
up the desktop simply reboot and scan for malware. If it doesn't then look
for a running process with that name and kill it and then re-run it manually
as above. If that doesn't work you can start the restore process by running
this:

"%SystemRoot%\System32\restore\rstrui.exe"

As for the malware scanning see below:

Malware Cleaners and Repair :
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/malwarefix.html

Galen
--

"You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his
trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will
come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

Sherlock Holmes