re: No desktop at start up
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 8:23 am
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
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re: No desktop at start up
Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Posted by Ed
(741 messages posted)
REVERT TO A REGISTRY BACKUP
Boot to DOS (using a bootable floppy disk, e.g. from http://www.bootdisk.com) and type the following at the C:\ prompt
-
SCANREG /RESTORE
Note the space before the forward slash in this command.
Follow the on-screen instructions, and try to restore the *oldest* backup of the
registry (they're listed by date) as that's the one with the best chance of being
from before the problem arose.
By default Windows keeps 5 backup copies of the Windows Registry, so that you can
go back to before the problem arose.
When an on-screen message tells you that the registry has been successfully restored,
restart the computer normally.
Ed
On Friday, October 5, 2007 at 6:16 pm, Rob wrote:
>When I switch on the computer it goes through all the normal 'start up' stuff and
>then leaves me with no icons at all on my desktop. I have tried the Boot disk and
>gone into Safe Mode but no icons there either. It's as if my hard drive is no longer
>there.
>I am (obviously) using another computer to write this. Is this a solvable problem
>or has my computer died?
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