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Wife's PC not working properly.
Windows XP. On start up it just shows the wallpaper. No icons. Nothing else.
Any suggestions?
Have you tried starting in Safe Mode? Press F8 repeatedly as it boots and then select Safe Mode from the menu.
If you get in then you'll probably want to check the drive for errors and take a look at which programs normally run at startup, as it sounds like one of them is bust.
Safe Mode just leaves me with a black screen with "Safe Mode" written on it.
Is the computer still working, just with a empty desktop? Can you right click and get display options or press winkey + E to get an explorer window?
The missus got it going via CONT ALT DEL and running winsys32 from there. Antivirus picked something up and killed it last time it was on and would appear to have upset some settings.
Told her to stay away from the specialist porn in the future.
Agree. Stick with the more generalist stuff.
explorer.exe isnt building the desktop for some reason. Boot it up as per, press CTRL, ALT and DEL, choose task manager.
Go to File -> New Task (Run) and then type in explorer.exe and click ok. If that doesnt get the desktop back your problem is a little bit more complex...you'll have to get your sherlock holmes hat on im afraid...