Only the desktop...no icons or taskbar or anything

[SVT Lurch]

My sister broke our desktop. I do not know what happened, but only the background shows up. There are some files off there she needs to save. The only way I know how to fix it is to reformat and start over, but then she loses everything. Anything I can do?

[line-em-up]

[QUOTE=SVT Lurch]My sister broke our desktop. I do not know what happened, but only the background shows up. There are some files off there she needs to save. The only way I know how to fix it is to reformat and start over, but then she loses everything. Anything I can do?[/QUOTE]

As it is booting up, repeatedly press F8. It will boot into safe mode. Once it boots up, hopefully it will look normal. Then, reboot it as usual and see if it comes up okay.

[JKD]

[QUOTE=SVT Lurch]My sister broke our desktop. I do not know what happened, but only the background shows up. There are some files off there she needs to save. The only way I know how to fix it is to reformat and start over, but then she loses everything. Anything I can do?[/QUOTE]


Virus from all the porn sites again Trey? Shame, shame.

[SVT Lurch]

It came up normal for about 20 seconds, then it said there was an overbuffer error for explorer.exe and it had to shut down. Thus back to only the background. I guess I should've mentioned that explorer.exe is not running in the task manager, I assume that's the problem, but I don't know how to get it back.
[QUOTE=JKD]Virus from all the porn sites again Trey? Shame, shame.[/QUOTE]
Ones my sister went to, this is her computer.

[JKD]

[QUOTE=SVT Lurch]It came up normal for about 20 seconds, then it said there was an overbuffer error for explorer.exe and it had to shut down. Thus back to only the background. I guess I should've mentioned that explorer.exe is not running in the task manager, I assume that's the problem, but I don't know how to get it back.

Ones my sister went to, this is her computer.[/QUOTE]



You surf porn with your sister? WTF.....

[nitrofreak]

Try holding the Ctrl key and pressing escape. If this doesn't work, open task manager and go to the File menu, select New Task (Run...) and type explorer.exe in the resulting dialog box and press ok. If neither of these work, you will have to put the drive in another computer or use a tool like bartpe to recover the data. This is almost definately the result of a malware infection, though

[SVT Lurch]

[QUOTE=JKD]You surf porn with your sister? WTF.....[/QUOTE]
Damnit Steve...what I do in my personal time is none of your damn business!

nitrofreak: trying now, thanks.

[Walsted]

The stuff on the desktop is USUALLY just links. In Windows, depending upon version, it will be stored in a directory/folder dependant upon the profile. Which version of Windows is she running?

[SVT Lurch]

XP Home, but there's no task bar/start menu either.

It started up long enough for me to pull the files off, so I guess I'll reformat it tomorrow. Thanks for the help guys.

[Sgt Beavis]

[QUOTE=nitrofreak]Try holding the Ctrl key and pressing escape. If this doesn't work, open task manager and go to the File menu, select New Task (Run...) and type explorer.exe in the resulting dialog box and press ok. If neither of these work, you will have to put the drive in another computer or use a tool like bartpe to recover the data. This is almost definately the result of a malware infection, though[/QUOTE]

Nitrofreak is on the right trail here.

If you open the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) you can click File > New Task, type in Explorer.exe and the desktop should launch.

However if it fails, then most likely it is a failure caused by a 3rd party shell extension.

If this is the case, go to this link: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/shellexview.html

Download shellexview to your your computer and extract it from the zip file. Copy it to a floppy or burn to CD and transfer it to your sisters system.

From your sisters computer open task manager and click File > New Task, type in CMD and click OK. This opens a command prompt. Change to the drive letter where the CDrom or Floppy is located and run shexview.exe

with this tool, you can select and disable/enable any shell extention. You should ignore anything called a "windows shell common dll" because those are rarely the cause of the problem. Instead look at antivirus related shell extensions or anything that seems out of the ordinary. Once you've disabled everything that looks suspicious, try launching EXPLORE.EXE again and see what happens.

If this fails, your only recourse is to get a someone to look at a usermode memory dump. Unfortunately I'm really tapped out on time of I would offer to look at it....

[line-em-up]

[QUOTE=Sgt Beavis]Nitrofreak is on the right trail here.

If you open the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) you can click File > New Task, type in Explorer.exe and the desktop should launch.

However if it fails, then most likely it is a failure caused by a 3rd party shell extension.

If this is the case, go to this link: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/shellexview.html

Download shellexview to your your computer and extract it from the zip file. Copy it to a floppy or burn to CD and transfer it to your sisters system.

From your sisters computer open task manager and click File > New Task, type in CMD and click OK. This opens a command prompt. Change to the drive letter where the CDrom or Floppy is located and run shexview.exe

with this tool, you can select and disable/enable any shell extention. You should ignore anything called a "windows shell common dll" because those are rarely the cause of the problem. Instead look at antivirus related shell extensions or anything that seems out of the ordinary. Once you've disabled everything that looks suspicious, try launching EXPLORE.EXE again and see what happens.

If this fails, your only recourse is to get a someone to look at a usermode memory dump. Unfortunately I'm really tapped out on time of I would offer to look at it....[/QUOTE]

Excellent advice. I was going to say that myself. [COLOR=White]NOT![/COLOR] :p

[poopnut2]

Mine is doing the same thing. 2000 works fine though and that's what I'm using now. I was actually trying to download the new used album from some site and all of a sudden the thing froze. Turned it back on, and it looked normal, but like every 7 seconds, it would reset explorer, and now it just shows the background. Fucking viruses are bullshit. I'm convinced that viruses are created by anti-virus software companies hoping that you'll buy their anti-virus software.

[SVT Lurch]

[QUOTE=poopnut2]I'm convinced that viruses are created by anti-virus software companies hoping that you'll buy their anti-virus software.[/QUOTE]
LOL, me too man.