My desktop disappeared

Discussion in 'Software' started by morlok, Sep 21, 2004.

  1. morlok

    morlok Private E-2

    After being infected with a few virii, I decided to re-install win2k/p form scratch.
    I completely removed everything, even used a maxtor utility to zero out the disks (not easy when it's a RAID system).
    After reinstalling the OS, all SPs and patches,then the apps, everything ran fine.
    Only glitch was that earthlink was unable to complete a connection, although the handshake wen tfine.
    Through this process, I had rebooted several times, including after everything was finished. I ran a bunch of apps, and even DLed a bunch of pictures from the digicam to make sure that the interface was working.
    I ran AVwin and McAfee on it to check for diseases.
    So, after getting the error from earthlink, I reboot, and....

    NOTHING, absolutely nothing on the screen.
    I get the windows trill, but absolutely no icons on the screen, not even a task bar - a completely blank screen. It does remember my screen color choice (no wallpaper). Hitting C-A-D and running task mgr show nothing but windows system tasks, no user tasks. Not even the tasks in the startup file are there, nor programs that go into the tray next to the clock (no clock, either). Booting into safe mode shows the same, blank screen.
    Booting to a DOS prompt and looking in docs and settings shows that my startup and desktop folders have everything that I set up (even favorites are there).
    The only thing that I have added is Outpost Pro, but that survived a couple of reboots and a few learning cycles.
    SO... what happened to my desktop?
    The machine is a zombie right now.

    This is enough to make me re-install Win98 on everything ;-(
     
  2. DaRkKn1qHt

    DaRkKn1qHt Private First Class

    It appears you were using XP. If so then try this boot off of the XP installation CD. Choose the repair feature. In repair mode run these 3 commands:
    chkdsk /r
    fixmbr
    fixboot

    See if these will fix your issue.
     
  3. morlok

    morlok Private E-2

    Ummm... no. I clearly stated that I was using Win2k/p.
    I tried the various com'repair' options after booting up from teh CD, however none of them got me anywhere. Some of them were downright confusing as to what they were for.
    'Course, the 'emergency recovery disk' is somethign that I was never given teh option of creating, even thought I've installed/re-installed win2k/pa dozen times.
    Anyways, I just reinstalled from scratch, which gave me the opportunity to fix all those niggling mistakes I made the first (dozen ;-) times.
    I think I tracked the problem down to an errant registry cleaner, I use three.
    OTOH, I've always had problems with utilities doing funny things to my RAID array.
     
  4. s241823

    s241823 Private E-2

    Same thing happened to my XP desktop. I was advised that SHDOCDW.DLL was the culprit and that I should download this from www.dll-files.com and after unzipping place the unzipped file i.e. shdocvw.dll in the c:\windows\system32 folder (or possibly WINNT\system32 if your running W2K). This has worked for a lot of people but didn't for me so I interrupted the Boot (F8) and chose the last known good profile and this restored everything.

    Good luck.
     
  5. TheDoug

    TheDoug MajorGeek

    Could it be as simple as? Right-click on the desktop, select Active Desktop, and check the Show Desktop Icons check box.
     

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