The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Desktop icons & startup bar disappear at startup (XP Home)

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by joycecylam, May 19, 2008.

  1. joycecylam

    joycecylam Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    46
    Messages:
    185
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    For some reason, occasionally, when my notebook starts up, the desktop icons and the taskbar disappear. I can only see the background wallpaper. The only way I can restore the icons and taskbar is using Ctrl-Alt-Delete to either 1) restart, or 2) log off and log in again. Not sure what causes the problem. Any suggestion on how to fix it?
     
  2. goofball

    goofball Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    358
    Messages:
    1,710
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    sounds like explorer is crashing. Check your Event Viewer for any hints as to why. I'd also try safe mode in case you are having some program loading at startup. The typical virus/spyware scans wouldn't hurt (do these in safe mode).
     
  3. Carrot Muncher

    Carrot Muncher Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    71
    Messages:
    463
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Yeah i'd do some anti scans, a friend gave me her laptop doing the same thing but all the time, ended up being a virus. I just copied that data and reformatted as some things in windows were missing.

    If I remember I did remove the virus but then the windows refused to load at all and had to use erd commander 2005 to replace a file that was deleted after removing the virus, I suppose you could use a live linux cd for the same thing.