Windows Explorer Not Starting

[Rames]

We have several users who are experiencing a hard to reproduce but persistent
problem. When the computer starts users they see their desktop background but
nothing else, no start menu, task bar or icons. Launching the task manager
and running explorer.exe seems to be the work around and we have noticed no
bad side affects.

The problem affects a dozen or so users out of thousands but once users have
the problem it reoccurs frequently but sporadically. They are all joined to a
domain which has very few policies. We have never seen the problem on
computers that do not have folder redirection for their "My Documents".

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot or any known problems with folder
redirection that would cause such behaviour?

Rames

 

[Arkadiusz 'Black Fox' Artyszuk]

We have several users who are experiencing a hard to reproduce but persistent
problem. When the computer starts users they see their desktop background but
nothing else, no start menu, task bar or icons. Launching the task manager
and running explorer.exe seems to be the work around and we have noticed no
bad side affects.
The problem affects a dozen or so users out of thousands but once users have
the problem it reoccurs frequently but sporadically. They are all joined to a
domain which has very few policies. We have never seen the problem on
computers that do not have folder redirection for their "My Documents".
Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot or any known problems with folder
redirection that would cause such behaviour?

Check string value "Shell" (should be set to "explorer.exe") in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon