Bad XP Restore

[hawk710]

I did a system restore on my girlfriend's system (XP Home) and when it came back up after restarting, the log on was normal but once the desktop came up there were no icons or task bar. All I can do is ctrl-alt-del and shut it back down. I tried opening in safe mode with prompt to get back into the restore function with the string microsoft provided (%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe) but when the restore window opens, it is empty. Anybody have a clue as to ehat I can do to correct this before she kills me for trashing her pc?

 

[Spike]

Can you open task manager with CTRL-ALT-DEL? If so, try running 'explorer.exe' from the run command under 'file' and see if you get your taskbar back. from there you may be able to more easily do something about it.

 

[hawk710]

Thank you for the help but when I typed that I get this message: "This file does not have program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options control panel." Can't quite figure that one out since I can't get into any control panels to configure folder options. Somehow windows is logging on but still there is nothing there when it opens. I pulled the hard drive out and slaved it into my system and looked through the files but nothing looks out of place. Still trying to figure out what to do short of doing a reinstall.

 

[hawk710]

Well I did a restore from the disc and everything came back the way it was except a few things which were easily repairable except for Norton anti virus but hey, at least she wont kill me now.