Windows desktop doesn`t show. No icons or taskbar etc.

[armymom]

My son gave me his Presario 700 laptop. Yesterday I turned it on and all it would do is go to the wallpaper and then nothing. I do not get any icons or start button. I was able to get on line by going to the ctrl,alt,del and getting the task window and doing a search.

I can not find the restore disk and my son is in Irag, so I can not ask him where it is. My question is, is there a way to restore by using the task window to find the file?

Thanks,
Armymom

 

[Boogityboo04]

Is this Windows XP? I guess what you could do is search for rstrui.exe, it's the system restore utility, and try that out. You can find it in C:\Windows\system32\Restore (at least on my computer.)

 

[fastco]

If it's XP start the computer and press F8 at the list of chioces choose Last Known Good Configuration (or something like that) and press enter.

 

[armymom]

Thanks guys, I tried both of your suggestions, but neither worked. Any more ideas, short of buying a new computer.

 

[omski2k4]

well, I had this problem once, and sometimes it relieves itself when you try to open windows explorer by right clicking a file folder and click explore because this jump starts explorer.exe....well, sometimes, it worked for me. if that doesn't work try chkdsk it might be a corrupt system file that's causing all of this.