No start menu, taskbar, or desktop icons on boot.

[zack]

I've seen this problem on a couple of PC's lately, and am wondering if
there is a fix. I will boot a windows xp computer, and all that will
show up is the desktop background. I get no icons, start menu, or
taskbar.. Just a blank desktop. I can run the task manager by
pressing ctrl+alt+del. From there, I can run programs. From the task
manager, I notice that explorer.exe is not running, which is required
for the start menu, taskbar, and desktop icons. If I manually type
explorer.exe in the run box, explorer.exe will show up in the task
manager for about a second, then it immediately exits.

The only way I can get any kind of file manager is to run iexplore,
which brings up internet explorer. Then I can type My Computer into
the address bar, and it opens a regular explorer file manager window,
but still no icons, taskbar, or start menu.

I've tried running system restore, using the rstrui.exe program, ,but
it does not load completely. On one computer, nothing shows up, and on
the other computer, I basically just get a window with a border and
title bar and white background.

I have checked for dummy explorer.exe files, but only one
explorer.exe exists on the path on each system. I have replaced them
with explorer.exe from a working system to no avail. I have scanned
for viruses, etc, using latest virus definitons. No viruses found.
Nothing seems to work.

The only fix I have been able to come up with is wiping the drive and
re-installing XP.

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

See www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

 

[zack]

See www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

That program would not load on the affected system. It would complain
about an ocx control. There is also a xp_taskbar_desktop_fixall.vbs
file on that web page. I could not get it to run because .vbs was not
a registered type. So I opened the .vbs file in notepad and ran the
script operations manually, but it did not fix the problem.

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

Your scripting host engine is screwed up.

Download the Windows Script Host for Win XP from:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/list/webdev.asp

and install it. Its the same version that ships with XP.