Desktop icons & start menu tools wont work!!!

Solved/Closed
PLEASE HELP ME!!! - Apr 8, 2010 at 10:25 PM
 BDK - Dec 8, 2018 at 12:53 PM
im stuck if anyone can help me PLEASE!! everything was fine yesterday I logged off and when I went to log on again all my desktop icons had the IE logo instead of the normal icon pics and when I try to open them it just opens an internet explorer page then that disappears and a download window opens but when I try to click download it disappears and the IE page opens again it just repeats that process every time. also I cannot open any of my programs in my start menu they all say windows cannot open this file....so therefore I cannot even do a system restore. I cant use my virus software or anything and ive tried downloading stuff to fix it but I can download but cannot actually save it to run it so im at a loss as to what to do next ive been trying to fix this now since yesterday and im not real computer savy so I didnt want to do something that could hurt it either. I did try to get to system restore through safe mode but it does the same thing in safe mode. also cant reinstall windows xp cuz my cd/dvd isnt working either! im going crazy trying to figure this out please help!!!! its a Dell XPS windows xp professional edition.
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4 responses

XBMC_Fndr Posts 1 Registration date Thursday September 30, 2010 Status Member Last seen September 30, 2010 6
Updated on Dec 10, 2018 at 06:21 AM
If you have already Rebooted and the problem still exists, you can still try this but I doubt it will help. If you haven't (and dont want to reboot for whatever reason) give it a shot. It won't hurt and may solve your problem


I have had this happen several times. While viruses or malware MAY cause this a more common problem is an app you are running that is "not playing nice with memory". It has happened to me while running something I really don't want to cancel and restart.

This solution is quite simple and DOES NOT Require a REBOOT.
  • 1. Open Task manager (Ctrl - Alt - Dlet),
  • 2. Click Process tab,
  • 3. Find Explorer.exe (or explorer.exe).
  • 4. Terminate it. (ignore warning)
  • 5. Click Applications tab
  • 6. Then New Task.
  • 7. Enter (guess what) explorer.exe and press enter


your desktop and taskbar will reappear (and your long running app will still be running)
15
PLEASE HELP ME!!!
Apr 9, 2010 at 05:37 AM
Thanks for trying to help me :-) Im just glad I was able to fix it! lol
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totally lost but found
Jan 10, 2014 at 10:59 PM
It happened to me as well and there were several explorer/exe (4 of them). I terminated only one at first. It did not work, then I got scared to terminate the others...then, I thought :whathever...and terminated all of them....have no idea what I did or if it was going to ("or will") harm the computer...did it anyway and bingo... it worked. Thanks a lot for the tip. I love the internet...
Note: 3 of the explorer.exe had 54 kb or something and one said 200 and something...why they different?
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