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re: No desktop at start up
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 8:23 am
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Joe Hepperle (73 messages posted)


Your computer has probably NOT died, but it might have software corruption or just 
the wrong setting. 

Right-click on the desktop, select 'ACTIVE DESKTOP' and look for the entry "VIEW 
AS WEB PAGE". If there is a check mark there, uncheck it and your icons will reappear.

If there is no checkmark beside "VIEW AS WEBPAGE", then roll back to the first menu 
and roll down to the line "ARRANGE ICONS". On that menu, CLICK on the choice "by 
Name".

If none of those work, right-click again on the desktop and this time choose the 
very bottom choice, PROPERTIES. That will open up the Display Properties box. Click 
on the "SETTINGS" tab and set the screen resolution to 800 x 600 (You can set it 
different later -- for now we need to try 800 x 600). 

Click the APPLY button then click OKAY. If your computer wants to restart, let it. 
If it does not want to restart, but instead pops up another box that asks if you 
want to keep these settings, click "YES".

You may see your icons now, but...

If none of that works, it may be that EXPLORER.EXE is not running. Either because 
it is missing or corrupted. (This is not the web browser program, which is similarly 
named IEXPLORE.EXE)

With your icon-barren desktop in front of you, press CTRL-ALT-DEL

That will bring up the TaskManager. If you see absolutely nothing there in the white 
area where file names would be listed, then that is the problem... EXPLORER.EXE is 
not running. (It would appear in the list as EXPLORER, not the full explorer.exe)

Now, what to do...

If there are no entries, or some entries, but not EXPLORER, look to see if any of 
them say "(not responding)". If so, highlight any one of those and click on the "END 
TASK" button, one at a time for each one. Make note of what the entry was that was 
not responding.

Try these procedures first and report back with your results. If you have no success, 
there is still a lot more we can do... but no need to get greasy and dirty if it 
is a simple fix...

Joe Hepperle




Written in response to:
No desktop at start up (Rob: Friday, October 5, 2007 at 6:16 pm)

There are presently no replies to this message.

All messages in this thread [show all]
-No desktop at start up (Rob: Fri, Oct 5, 2007, 6:16 pm)
*re: No desktop at start up (Joe Hepperle: Tue, Oct 9, 2007, 8:23 am)
*re: No desktop at start up (Ed: Sun, Oct 28, 2007, 2:41 pm)
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