[Asimo]

I'm going to keep this short:

I just got an HP Pavilion a6230n with Vista Home Premium. I was attempting to install a webcam, but since it seemed to not work, I figured I would uninstall, restart, and then reinstall it.

I uninstalled the webcams drivers, and when I went to restart, the computer just hung at the "Shutting Down" screen for about 20 minutes. Finally I just held down the power button and force a restart. When it loaded back up, I had a black field for a desktop, and was completely missing my taskbar/start button. I tried messing with the themes, and now I have one of the default Vista wallpapers as a background, instead of just a black field, though I still don't have any icons on the desktop.

I've also ran two virus scans and one spyware scan through ZoneAlarm, which got rid of two Trojans, but that didn't fix my problem.

I also can't get into the Start Menu and Taskbar section of the Control Panel.

As you can guess, I'm navigating through the task manager. It sucks.

By now, I'm pretty much tempted to just wipe the hard drive and do a fresh XP install, but if there is a way to fix this problem, I'd much rather just do that.

Any suggestions?


-UPDATE-

I found the answer by Googling around for about an hour. For future reference, if anyone else has this problem, try this:

1) Run taskmgr.exe
2) Kill all the "explorer.exe" processes owned by your account
3) From within Task Manager: File-> New Task and type "explorer.exe"

[earlyriser]

1) Run taskmgr.exe
2) Kill all the "explorer.exe" processes owned by your account
3) From within Task Manager: File-> New Task and type "explorer.exe"

this works fine until i restart...how do i get it to stay permanent

[XtremeNuker]

Hi buddy what you might try is , create a new profile and log on in. If all is fine it might be your profile thats causing the problem. If the new account logs in fine make that account an administrator, and copy all the important files from the account that gives the explorer issue , than proceed to document and settings in System drive and delete off the folder that is linked to the user name of the account that is giving the problem. Perform a reboot and log in as the problematic account, your profile should be re-created.If all is fine that the problem should be solved. By the way you in fact don't need to delete that folder you can even re-name it. Try this out it might help. Post back if it doesn't

[earlyriser]

ok thanks...i tried your advice and made a new account...the exact same problem occurred but the blank background was blue instead of black...(enjoyed the change ! haha)
but as it stands i have had to put a shortcut of explorer.exe into my documents so i dont have to go through the rigmarole of finding it everytime i log on
cheers

[Elvandil]

This should repair it:

Shell Specification

[earlyriser]

thanks...can you tell me what it is before i do it just so i know if il be goosed or if il be ok please?
and a bit of instructions on how to do it please

[Elvandil]

Get the reg file out of the zip archive and double-click it. You can do that from a floppy, USB drive, or the desktop. Open it in Notepad if you wish to see the contents. It specifies explorer.exe as the shell and sets userinit.exe for initialization.

[earlyriser]

the jobs a good un thanks very much....all done and dusted.
what a top forum this is for help.
hat off to you all its good to know theres help somewhere
deano

[Elvandil]

Thanks for letting us know. But what happened to Asimo?