Dissappearing desktop.............

[R&J]

My parents have been using my old laptop for a few months now, which is great as they are both in their late 70's and are enjoying the technology.

They called me to say there is nothing on the screen..............as it turns out it just shows the Desktop Wallpaper picture but all the shortcuts and the status / info bar along the bottom have gone.
there is no right click mouse options either

Using Ctrl/alt/del I used the task manager to open up programs ....word, excel, picassa they seem to function properly including the RH mouse button

Have they pressed something to turn the desktop icons etc off .........is there a way to get them back?

the machine is running windows XP............thanks in advance

[oggs]

Rich, if you right click and then click arrange icons by see if the "show desktop items" has a tick beside it.

Edit just read the no right click option

Edited by oggs on Sunday 6th January 22:23

[stemll]

Probably not the "show desktop icons" option as the taskbar has disappeared too.

Sounds like a Windows Explorer crash although it will normally come back with XP.

Is this a one-off or a persistent problem?

[tim2100]

Sounds like Explorer has crashed. Get this quite often at work.

Either restart fixes it, Or press Windows Key & R, and then type in 'explorer'

Tim.

[R&J]

Stemll
this is the first time it's happened.........no idea why
I'm told it was shut down the same way as normal, so they expected to see the normal start-up

incidently it doesn't get connected to the internet

[R&J]

tim2100 said:

Sounds like Explorer has crashed. Get this quite often at work.

Either restart fixes it, Or press Windows Key & R, and then type in 'explorer'

Tim.

Tim, I restarted it a few times, with no success, I'll try pressing Windows Key & R, and then type in 'explorer' as you suggest

[buggalugs]

You might have accidentaly enabled the external display as a second monitor, and the taskbar, icons, et. at. are on that. If you can get the display properties up you can rectify the situation (or try safe mode, or VGA mode via f8 on bootup)

[R&J]

I've tried the above but still no luck............

ideas please

[oggs]

[quote=R&J]
ideas please
[/quote]

[sstein]

Create a new admin user account and copy across all the data to that new account (My documents, desktop, favorites, application data etc).

Then change the autologon user to the new admin user, and log off and log on with the new user.

Restart XP

This seems to be a common fault with XP

To get the icons back hit Ctrl-alt-del and bring up task manager, if explorer is running kill it and restart the process. File-> New Task(Run)
and enter explorer.exe. This should hopefully let you set up a new user.

Also if you can do a system restore to last known good configuration.

-

Stuart

Edited by sstein on Monday 7th January 16:11

[R&J]

stuart
from the "blank desktop" wallpaper all I can get to is the btask manager from Ctrl/Alt/Del and the open programs from there........how do I tell if the explorer is running?

cheers

Rich

[sstein]

If when you do ctrl-alt-del and task manager pop-ups, click on the processes tab explorer.exe should be in this list. If not go to File->New Task(Run) and enter explorer.exe. This should get the desktop back to allow you to fix the problem.

-

Stuart

[R&J]

I've now looked at the task manager "explorer.exe." wasn't there when opening it it appears briefly on the process list and then vanishes.

Is it a time for reloading from the backup discs or is there any more ways I can try?

[sstein]

Sounds like explorer.exe could be corrupt. I think it may be time to re-install unfortunately

-

Stuart

[sstein]

Do they have anything loading on startup? I would be tempted to remove all the installed programs which run on startup and find out if one of them is causing the problem.

I've read that this can sometimes happen if google desktop is installed. Don't know if it's true though.

To get to the add remove console, go to task manager and File->New Task(Run) and enter appwiz.cpl.

-

Stuart

[sstein]

Also, can you get into safe mode?

If you can, does the desktop appear as normal?

-

Stuart

[R&J]

Stuart...........thanks for your help

It was a case of reloading back to factory setting
thankfully all the files on the machine were backed up on an external drive
so no losses or damage done

It's just the inconvenience and the fact that the problem beat me

Thanks again