Hey, I'm doing this for a friend since his computer is dead, essentially. He says he can log-in, but once he logs in, all he sees is the wallpaper, with no icons, no taskbars, nothing. I told him to try and run explorer.exe from the task manager, but he sais "ctrl-alt-delete" doesn't work.

So then I said he should probably do a recovery and get his XP CD.

He doesn't have one..unfortunately...


so..now i'm stuck. I wanna help him, but dunno how.

Any help would be appreciated.

The F-nimda virus can cause this. I would check in the malware forum after you get the desktop up and running. Can you get into the desktop in safe mode by hitting the F8 key while the computer is starting up and then selecting safemode.

If you can get there then go to the malware forum( on another computer) and read this article.

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Must-Read-B...-Log-t2852.html

Follow its steps to see if you can get the computer up and running. If not, get a Malware tech to help you find the problem.

good luck,

SRX660

He can't access safe mode. He's tried, and it does the same thing were it stops after the log-in screen.

Then rather than spending a week on the malware forum i would rather use a XP cd and wipe the HD and reinstall the OS. Much faster and easier. After that i would invest in Norton Ghost and learn how to use it because it can save a ISO file of your OS setup so you never have to spend a week getting a reinstall straightened out.

I do this quite a lot simply because it is cheaper for people to pay me for a 3 hour reinstall than a 8 to 24 hour "try to find the fix for" repair. Most even like starting out with a fresh system, once they get past the preferences changes they make.

SRX660