Desktop Icons And Taskbar Disappear – The Solution

Q: Listen I have this problem with my computer where my desktop icons and the taskbar at bottom with the start menu just disappears and comes back every few seconds.

When I turn my comp on the whole desktop disappears so to get access to my desktop  I need to press "alt" "ctrl" "delete"  "new task" and I enter "explorer.exe"

The desktop shows up but it disappears and appears again every few seconds.

How can I fix this?
Thanks

A: The problems that you have mentioned all relate to a program within Windows called explorer.exe . Do not worry, explorer.exe is supposed to be part of Windows. It manages many different parts of the user interface in Windows. As long as your antivirus and anti-spyware programs are up-to-date, you can probably believe the results of your security scans. Most often, explorer.exe fails because Windows cannot find where it is physically located on your hard drive. There are some maintenance routines built into Windows XP that should help Windows to find the location of explore.exe and other files too.

Solution #1

The first of these is called defragmentation. This tool helps your computer to make a map of the files on its hard drive so that Windows can find them more easily. You can access this feature by going: My Computer => right click on your hard drive => Properties => Tools . The second maintenance feature, Error-checking , is also located in the Tools tab. Please select both checkboxes in the Error-checking window. The next time you restart your computer, your hard drive will be scanned for errors and repaired. Repeat these routines for all of the hard drives in your computer.

Solution #2

After you log on to your computer and your icons/taskbar disappear do Ctr + Alt + Del and then click File -> New Task and when prompted type in regedit.exe . A new window will open up and you will need to go to the folder that says HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows NT -> Current Version -> just click on winlogon once, do not expand it.

Then you will need to locate Shell on the right hand side. Right click on Shell and change its value to explorer.exe if it isn’t already. Mine was already explorer.exe but I retyped it and entered it and it works now.

I am 99.9% sure that the tools described above will fix your problem. If not, consider creating backups of your important data and reinstalling Windows. Good Luck!