Upon starting up my computer in normal mode, the desktop icons and taskbar do not appear. Using ctrl+alt+delete, I am able to open the task manager. There are no applications listed, but under the processes, the common ones including "explorer.exe" and "rstrui.exe" are listed. However all of these processes have a CPU of 0, except for the "System Idle Process" under the username "SYSTEM" has a CPU of 99. Upon someone's recommendation, I booted normally, went to Task Manager > Application Tab and picked 'new task'. I entered explorer.exe and clicked 'OK' to restart the desktop. However, an hourglass just appeared for a couple of seconds and then nothing happened.
I have tried starting my computer in safemode and all the icons and taskbar appear in this mode. I did run a virus scan here and nothing was found.
Can someone please help me?? I've had this problem one other time in the past and was able to fix this through someone's elses suggestion. But I failed to write that down.
All help is greatly appreciated!
P.S. I am on another computer in the house...my computer is a laptop with wireless connection and I am unable to get the internet on it.