XP Home Desktop Woes

[DesFox]

Have been dealing with a client via the phone, and suspect we have a corrupt user profile...

Problem with Windows XP Home. PC boots and seems to start normally but presents the user with a blank blue screen, no desktop icons and no task bar. Right clicking anywhere in the desktop does nothing. The task manager can be started and applications ran???

Starts in Safe mode just fine (with "normal desktop&quot, returning to last known good configuration results in the same results

Anybody seen this/What are we missing?

Many TIA,
Desmond
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[bcastner]

It is easy enough to test for profile corruption: create a new profile in Safe Mode as Administrator, and then logon with the new user name.

I suspect though this is a virus or trojan. There have been several instances of this in the last few weeks.

As you can run Task Manager, close explorer.exe in Processes, then File, New Task, explorer.exe

If the desktop reappears it suggests the registry entries for your startup have been corrupted; if nothing happens it indicates that a virus or trojan has replaced explorer.exe with a substitute.