Desktop items won't show

seven60seven

New Member
Hi, I have a problem with my computer and this place looked like a good place to ask for help.
Whenever I turn on the computer, all the icons and the start bar on the bottom on the screen (with the clock) won't show up. I can't even shut down the computer because there's no start menu. I got on the internet by pressing F2, but if I minimize the window, I can't get it back. This happened during a spysweeper sweep. My guess is that it's a virus, but I don't know much about computers. Does anyone know how to fix this? I'm using windows XP.

edit: I've tried restarting it but it doesn't make a difference.
 
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check out what you are running as a shell:

1) Press key combination WINKEY+R and type in regedit
2) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and check the value of the Shell entry is Explorer.exe

If that is right, then try pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL and under the Applications tab press the New Task... button and type in explorer

See if that gets your shell running. If it does, try rebooting and see if there's still a problem.
 
I did what you said, and it helped. I also ran spysweeper and it removed a lot of bad files, so hopefully things should be OK now. Thanks for your help munkyeetr.
 
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