Taskbar & Desktop Icons Missing?

[Chris LeFebvre]

A friend gave me his daughters computer to fix and I've been working
on it for a week now and I'm more or less stuck on what to do, although
I have a pretty good idea what the problem is. This system is a Dell
with XP Home SP1,

Initially it was infested with virus's, trojans, adware and spyware...
you know the usual teenage stuff and the symptoms were pretty much the
same as now after selecting the user name from the list you'd get a
black screen (no matter who logged on) and that would be it. I could
bring up the task manager with Alt-Ctrl-Del and run programs from there
and so I was able to:

Run the add / remove programs applet and get rid of the Norton
Anti-Virus and install NOD32, updated and cleaned the hard drive.
(internet connectivity works find) Install the latest Adaware 1.06 and
do a full system scan, remove all the various garbage.

Run the display settings / themes applet and reset them to classic
instead of XP in case the display settings / themes were trashed. This
only got me the wallpaper back instead of a black background.

Since I couldn't get either windows explorer or internet explorer to
run I installed Powerdesk Pro (a file management tool similar to Windows
Explorer) and Firefox. I tried downloading IE 6 SP2, and the network
install of XP SP2. Installing both of these didn't help the problem
which as far as I can tell is that despite being able to see the
explorer.exe and iexplore.exe program files I can't seem to run them,
when I open a command prompt and try to run them either from the current
directory with a fully qualified path or double click on them from
PowerDesk I get one of two messages (sorry, left my notes at home so
this is the approximate message) both are basically "can't locate the
file specified / can't run (null)". I did see a forum message about a
registry key "killlist" which did contain both explorer and iexplore so
I blanked the value but still no good.

There was several forum messages relating to no taskbar and desktop
icons:
The Windows update / patch that was know to cause this wasn't
installed.
I did download and run the vbs script located on one of the MVP's
site that was
supposed to repair the taskbar, this didn't seem to make any
difference.
I did try and create a new user / profile and log in as that but
still no good.
Before installing SP2 I extracted iexplore from the cab file it
still wouldn't run.
The was some mention of ending the explorer process from the task
manager and
then rerunning it to get the taskbar and desktop but it's not
listed in processes.

It seems like those two programs specifically are somehow being blocked
from running (but not by killlist) since they seem to be the only two
executables that won't run, so I don't think it's a file associations
problem. The last test I tried was to copy explorer.exe to myexpl.exe
and then try to run myexpl.exe and what I got was Windows Explorer but
not the taskbar or desktop.

I'd rather not have to resort to using the system restore CD to return
the system to it's original state, does anyone have any other idea's on
this?

Thanks,

- Chris LeFebvre

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

 

[Chris LeFebvre]

Hi Carey:
Actually I saw that mentioned in the same message as the vbs script
from the same web site I think and I'd tried that as well but it doesn't
appear to fix the problem. Any other idea's?

Thanks,

- Chris LeFebvre

 

[Guest]

I have this same problem, however, I never updated to Service Pack 2.

I haven't tried the Taskbar Plus!

Have you been able to fix the problem?
--
Mr Myth

Hi Carey:
Actually I saw that mentioned in the same message as the vbs script
from the same web site I think and I'd tried that as well but it doesn't
appear to fix the problem. Any other idea's?

Thanks,

- Chris LeFebvre

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

 

[Chris LeFebvre]

I've searched google groups for just about all variations of XP,
taskbar, desktop icons etc. and pretty much tried every single
suggestion I've found and nothing I've tried has been able to repair
this problem. I find it absolutely incredible that a virus, spyware or
adware can do this kind of damage and make the operating system pretty
much unusable and that Microsoft has no utility to repair the problem.
The best answer that the MS knowledge base seems to have is to perform
an in-place upgrade but that comes with all kinds of warnings about "You
may loose data", "Some programs may not work" etc. but that's only an
option for people who have a full version XP CD.. most of the people I
know have Dell's or Compaq / HP's which only come with a system restore
CD which you can't do an in-place upgrade with. (By the way, all four of
my computers I built myself and are running Win2K which may be at the
end of it's life but I've never had any serious problems with them, but
then again I don't do the things that some of these crazy teen agers do)

Sorry if this is a bit of a rant but the more I look into this the
more people I find asking about this or similar problems and no one has
an answer least of all Microsoft, I guess in some cases the scripts and
utility programs that the MVP's have come up with do fix the problem
(just not in this case I guess) but in my book Microsoft is asleep at
the switch and really needs to wake up and put out fixes for these types
of problems.

- Chris

 

[Guest]

Yes I quite agree with you.

In order to fix this problem I had to purchase an entirely new version of
Windows XP Home Edition. I thought that when I installed this I might be able
to use the Microsoft Home Edition Key on the side of the Dell computer but it
didn't work. After calling Dell and Microsoft, I just sucked it up and used
the key that came with the software.

I talked with Microsoft tech support and they offered no solution. They even
suggested that using the key that came with the computer would be illegal! So
because of this problem the same operating system has to be purchased twice
for the one computer with the one owner.

I also had to go through the ordeal of being passed from a tech to a
customer service and back to a tech, and every time I had to explain my
situation from the beginning. One time the person just flat out hung up. None
of them had a clue such a thing existed. When I check boards such as this
one, I see that this is a problem that is happening to a lot of people. Do
they not know? Do they not care? Makes a person want to use a different
operating system.

There's my rant.