Start Menu Crashing! HELP!

[happylandings]

I am running Windows XP Pro SP2 with all the latest updates.

The problem I'm having is with the Start Menu crashing. Every so often
the
left pane of the Start menu goes black and then the shortcuts on the
right
side pane also stop working. For instance if I click on the RUN command
when
this happens I get a spurious error message saying 'Windows can not
create a
shortcut here, would you like to create one on the Desktop'! Also when
this
has happened

The only way I have found to 'cure' this problem is to either log off
my
user account, or reboot the computer. By the way my User Account has
full
administrative privileges, though it is not the in-built Administrator
Account. On restarting my User Account, after the Start Menu has
'crashed',
I then loose all the toolbars that I've set up on the Taskbar. I have
the
Quick Launch, the Address bar, Control Panel and Windows Media Player
all
setup on Taskbar, but these all disappear after the Start Menu crash. I
have
to then manually re-apply these Toolbars to get them back.

As time goes on this seems to be happening more frequently. It's at
a point now where every time I start the system, from cold, the Start
Menu
'crashes' and I have to log off and log back on to get it to work
right. It
will then, for no obvious reason 'crash' again while working in
Windows. I
haven't been able to see any pattern to this, or any obvious trigger
for
this behaviour.

Any thoughts or suggestions as to what to do to stop this happening
would be
most appreciated.


Mark

 

[Gerry Cornell]

What are your arrangements for dealing with viruses and spyware?

Look in Event Viewer ( System and Application tabs ) for error reports
over the last 24 hours and post copies here.

You can access Event Viewer by
selecting Start, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer. When researching
the
meaning of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and
Description are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;enus;308427&Product=winxp

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Double click the button and close Event
Viewer. Now start your message(email) and do a paste into the body of
the
message. This will paste the info from the Event Viewer Error Report
complete with links into the message. Make sure this is the first paste
after
exiting from Event Viewer.


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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