[Resolved] Windows 2000 desktop problem

[krellnor]

When 2000 boots to the desktop- no icons load, nothing in the task bar but the start button and the clock. When I put the pointer on the start button it turns to an hourglass and then won't do anything. If I ctrl-alt-del to the task manager and kill explorer.exe and then open another explorer.exe everything is fine. Nothing is running in the start menu and and I have no viruses. This is driving me nuts. Any help appreciated.

[Mjölnir]

When you CTRL+ALT+DEL, sort your processes in order of usage and see what is consuming all the load... Is the Perfomance chart showing full CPU usage? How is the Memory usage? Check this out even when you delete the explorer.exe...

Maybe you might like to copy over the old explorer.exe with the one in C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386. Easier if your partitions are FAT32...

Start the PC in Debugging Mode under the F8 Boot menu options. Sometimes this can iron out niggling issues.

Could be something in your Run lists in your registry, but that would show up in your processes as being a resource hog...

What changes do you remember making before this started happening? Installing a program, drivers or some hardware? Maybe just altering system settings?

Have you run Spybot S&D or another Spyware program (ie. AdAware)?

See if it does it in Safe Mode... Hope some of this helps...

EDIT: If speed kills, I hope it's at the loins of a fast woman...

[krellnor]

Mjollnir
Thanks for the tips. I got it figured out. I decided to reformat after following all your tips and was still having problems. Everything is fine now. Thanks again.

[Mjölnir]

Cool stuff - I wonder what it was in the end... I have seen things like that, but they vary. Usually sneaky things that won't go away without a fight.

Anyway, worth having a go with anti-spyware software...

[N715DP]

Marking resolved.