Missing Desktop Icons & Taskbar

Hello all,

A good friend of mine is having an issue with his Win XP OS. I have never run into this problem and I was hoping someone might know a solution.

He is missing all his desktop icons & the taskbar. All that is seen after boot up is the XP desktop background. The mouse/cursor is funtional. This PC has multiple users and it doesn't matter which user signs on. The problem follows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318027&Product=winxp

For a possible solution. That is about the taskbar not being displayed.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320560&Product=winxp

Is about a machine which appears to hang before the desktop is displayed. I don't think this one is relevant, but it's worth a try.


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;818150&Product=winxp

Is most relevant if your friend just upgraded to WinXP.


See if those help- let us know of any extra info that you get. It might help us a lot to help you.

Windows XP is a master of control over separate users, which is why it is the perfect OS for networking. It looks like this control could have been unleashed, possibly an accident. Use that support link that was already posted in this thread, I have nothing else to give.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I forwarded the links to my friend. He'll let me know if his problem are resolved.

Thanks again...:grinthumb

I'm having the EXACT same problem. explorer.exe doesn't do anything, it just makes an hour glass beside my pointer blink a few times. I've tried system restore, I've tried it on other users. I once got it to work by just starting my computer but as soon as I started it after the same problem would occur several times. Nothing is working for me either.

PLEASE HELP!!!! i have the same problem all my desktop icons are gone as well as my system tray/taskbar i am using windows xp sp2 and i dont know much so please help me!!!!!!

I had the same problem 4 days ago. Every time I Ctrl+Alt+Del and made a new process called explorer.exe it showed for 2-3 seconds then disappeared. I did a system restore and everything was back to normal. You could try virus scans?

thanx but how do you do a system restore?

You could try restoring before you had the explorer.exe problem. If it was long ago, you might not want to do it because it looses all the data saved after the restore point chosen.

Since you don't have the taskbar, use Task Manager

press CTRL+ALT+DEL
File>New Task (Run)
type HDD:\WINDOWS\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe

Substitue HDD for your hard drive letter name that contain your system files. (Usually C)

Hope this helps

thanks soo much im trying it rite now

Hi, I too had my desktop washed out. Even system restore didn't helped for me.
The solution worked out for me is simple.
The cause is your 'explorer.exe' file may be deleted or corrupted. Check for it once. If so, Copy the 'explorer.exe' file from 'C:/WINDOWS' folder from any working/healthy(eg., your friend's)computer and paste it in your 'C:/WINDOWS' directory and Restart your system.
That's it. All desktop icons and taskbar will be visible and working.

thank you very much this might just be what im looking for i will try it asap

simplest solution

i had the same problem...
i installed avg,ran a scan,'healed' the viruses and voila ...the desktop and taskbar are gone!

i ,after reading some forums, concluded that it had to do something with 'explorer.exe'
so i went to c:\\windows
searched for explorer.exe
and ran it
everything came back !

(im running vista home basic)

yo are very very lucky. your computer must have found the file that was stopping explorer.exe from functioning when you ran it manually. make sure that this never happens again by running this program that got me through the problem:http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/sUBs/Beta/ComboFix.exe

copy paste that into address bar...it is called combofix also search google for "hijack this" if you don't have it already and post it in dellcommunity.com forums titled "hjt logs" and they will tell you what to remove. anyone else reading this with the same problem i highly recommend combofix...it took my tears away lol

I have similar problem...
My shortcuts on desktop are missing (but not all, like they were randomly moved)...
If I go to my documents and settings/user/desktop folder I see that all items that are on desktop are there, but I tried to manually write (in MyComputer Address field) name of folder that is missing, and everithing was there......
All my missing desktop items exists somewhere, but I cannot see them, only if I write them manually......
I've tried to restart explorer.exe, Display options are OK, show Desktop icons marked, i have no viruses or spyware, and dont know what to do....

can u open mycomputer

I found out what happened,
the last thing I would think of --- bad sector on disk -- but thanks anyway
looks like I'm gonna speend one day on reinstalling everything

ComboFix

ComboFix worked great for me. I was going crazy. Thanks for keeping me sane.

Just solved the same "missin desktop/taskbar, explorer.exe deosn't run, system restore doesn't work" problem with ComboFix, many thanks to all of you who worked on this!