os windows xp media edition
internet explorer 8
AVG anti virus
windows defender


hi, i hope someone can help. when i turn my pc on all i get is the screen saver and the cursor. there are no shortcut icons and no taskbar. the only thing i can get to work is the task manager, and when i try to open a program from there the only thing that happens is the task bar flashes at the bottom and dissapears. i have tried starting it in safe mode, but the same thing happens the task bar flashes on and of and iam left with a black screen with safemode written in the corners. i scan my computer every week with AVG, and do a windows onecare scan evey month. after my last AVG scan there were no threats detected. the only web sites i visited were hotmail and facebook where i did save a picture to my pc. i hope thiis is enough information for someome to help me. thanx..........

Hello Beani, Welcome to PC Help Forum!

I am sure one of our great techs or helpful members will be able to provide some answers for you

I have marked your thread as open to encourage others to come take a look!

Somebody will be with you shortly!

Regards,

Smokeycheech

Lets go for a quick fix
press F8 on bootup and select safe mode with command prompt
this should work as its basically good old DOS

You will get a black screen that says C:

At the Command Prompt, type C:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe and press Enter.

this should give you a system restore from there restore it back a few days.

If this work ok its a quick fix try going back say a week

Um it seems like a problem with explorer.exe, it seems that either it has been damaged/deleted, or it has been disabled on startup. try going to task manager, clicking the "new task" button, typing "explorer.exe" *(without the quote marks), see what happens, i may be wrong though
EDIT: "i may be wrong though" not what you want to hear from someone trying to resolve a pc issue rofl

tried system restore going back over a week. either would'nt let me restore or ended up with same problem.

We will go to plan c
go back the the safe mode command prompt again as above

first just check if you have had the shell changed
at the prompt type
regedit

go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon is there a shell cmd that say shell=explorer or possible another shell? If you have a command that say shell= and it says some other name than explorer change it to explorer.exe

Now we will create another user in case its just the profile thats corrupt at the same prompt type

net localgroup Administrator fred /ADD

this will create a new user called fred with no password you can change fred for what ever you want as the name if it complains about Administrator try admin.

Now type
explorer

does the desk appear ok(it may complain about safe mode)?

finally reboot and try logging in as fred and see if its still a problem

thanx samurai will try it later. will let you know tomorrow if it works.