no desktop

Greeting Everyone:
This all started with internet explorer setting "work offline" to on by itself. I normally use Firefox, Messenger uses internet explorer. I reset internet explorer to default state, and then my desktop disappeared. The explorer .exe file is not loading. If you load it from the task manager it says it cant find it or an administrator needs to do it. I tried several remedies from searches to no avail. I attempted a repair from the OE XP home cd, and now I have desktop at bootup, with active desktop recovery displayed, then after 10 seconds the desktop goes off. Desktop goes on and off about 3 times till it quits. Then you can manually load explorer.exe and you may or may not get anything, until taskmanager gets shutdown. If the desktop happens to stay on for a length of time, if you use windows explorer ,windows explorer will shut down after maybe 15 seconds of normal function. No known malware. I am up for suggestions as what to try next. I guess its a registry issue. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
be free
overcomer

 

How do you know there is no known malware? What removal applications have you run to determine this? Have you worked through the Read & Run Me First sticky?

You said you had tried several remedies to no avail, but only listed one. Can you tell us all that you have tried so we do not waste your time suggesting things you have already tried.

 

Greeting everyone:
I guess I should have been more specific about what I had tried, my bad. Anyway, I went through and repeated malware searches, and reset desktop related items and everything came back up and is working fine. I was using explorer 7 , but if I download it (XP I am using is service pack 2 with explorer 6 which works fine) it wont run. I may try loading 7 again. I am wondering now about 7 since all this started with it setting "work offline "on its own. Any thoughts?
be free
Overcomer

 

You might want to update to Service Pack 3 and then try IE7 ?