No desktop icons, taskbar, start button. just the background.

Welcome to Majorgeeks!

I want to make sure I'm perfectly clear on what you have done. Are you saying you did every single step in the thread your referennced? You looked at all the registry locations and your tried disabling all items using msconfig, and you tried booting in safe mode etc? All the exact same things have been done but nothing helped and nothing looks wrong?

Does c:\windows\explore.exe exist?
What is the file size and date?
What SP revision of XP home do you have?
Do you have an i386 folder anywhere on your hard disk (like c:\i386 or C:\windows\i386 or anywhere else)?
Do you have a bootable XP Home CD or did Dell screw you like everyone else and only give you a recovery CD?

 

In the c:\i386 folder do you have explorer.exe or explorer.ex_

 

Are you sure? Normally there is one the end with an underscore instead of the last 'e'
Like explorer.ex_

This means it is a compressed form of the file. There is nothing like this at all?

Try using Windows Search to see if there is another copy. Just search for explorer.*
Yes the asterisk is what you want!

If you boot in safe mode and try to run explorer.exe, what happens?

 

Sorry! That was a dumb idea! I'm just preoccupied with some multiple threads and some stuff at home right now. Search is integrated into explorer so it will not work if explorer does not run.

Can you download files and install them? Does IE work?
Can you open a command prompt window too?

 

IE cannot be uninstalled. It is an integral part of the OS. You can choose not to run it but truly uninstalling it is not possible or desired. And without IE you cannot get your Microsoft software updates.

Try to run the steps in the below link and attach the requested log to your next message:

Using GetRunKey

You will need to unzip the getrunkey.bat and grep.exe files to an easy place for you to access from the command prompt. C:\ would be the easiest. The you need to open a command prompt and change directories to c:\ ( cd c:\ ) and then enter the getrunkey.bat command.

 

I see a couple things in that log but I'm not sure either of them is causing explorer.exe not to load.

Run appwiz.cpl from Task Manager. This should bring up Add/Remove programs. See if you find anything like System Soap Pro in there. If so, uninstall it.

Let me know if that works.

Also run regedit.exe from Task Manager. Does the Registry Editor open?

 

Okay!

See if you can do the below.

Copy the bold text below to notepad. Save it as fixme.reg to your C:\ root folder. Be sure the "Save as" type is set to "all files"

Now with the Registy Editor open click File, Import and locate the c:\fixme.reg file and select it and allow it add to the registry.

Then see if you can run the steps below:

• Now download smitRem.exe written by noahdfear and save the file to your Desktop.
• Double click on the smitRem.exe file to extract it to it's own folder on the desktop. (this should be the default selection)
• Now you will need to print or save these instructions locally (to a text file on you Desktop) for later reference. This is necessary because you must not have any browers open and must not connect to the internet while following the below steps.
• After saving the instructions, reboot into Safe mode
• Once you have booted in Safe Mode and your Desktop appears, make sure you close any other windows and only run what is specified. You can open notepad to view the instructions you saved but do not open anything else accept what is specified.
• Now open the smitRem folder, then double click the RunThis.bat file to start the tool. Follow the prompts on screen. Wait for the tool to complete and disk cleanup to finish.
• The tool will create a log named smitfiles.txt in the root of the drive that you ran the batch file on, eg; Local Disk C: or partition where your operating system is installed.
• Reboot in normal mode and attach the smitfiles.txt log here.

Also run GetRunKeys.Bat again and attach a new runkeys.txt log.

 

Sorry about the problems you are having but none of the steps would remove NTLDR.


See the below link for help on getting that file back from your WinXP CD.

http://www.bestpricecomputers.ltd.uk/freehelp/ntldr_missing.htm

or

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318728