windows desktop icons, start menu and toolbars gone after uninstall

Okay interesting thing here...my friend has a Dell laptop running the latest version of windows XP. he also uses it for work. last night as he was shutting it down, he got a warning from the company, that in effect told him...if you don’t uninstall google desktop, we will...

this morning he started the laptop and logging in was no problem, however when his desktop came up, the only thing he has is the desktop wall paper...no programs icons, or folder icons,, no icons what so ever. the tool bar with the start menu and the start button is also no where to be found. booting into safe mode, no difference.

now if i open up, task manager, i can go to file and do a new task run and browse the entire contents of the HDD. I can also see the items that i should be seeing on the windows desktop. i tried to at restore to the day before this and the day before that and no luck. i also cannot create any icons or shortcuts and put them on the desk top and they show up.

I can run programs as long as i am going to the .exe for like PowerPoint and word for example. at this point i am stumped and we are running a training course and so time it limited and by the time we ride the trains back to NJ from Manhattan, i am not gonna want to go on the phone to our corporate tech support and neither will my friend...

any help or suggestions would be welcomed, i even tried to re-install the google desktop from a portable 1G stick and i cant get the install to go...

thanx in advance..

Pete

 

Hi, I struck the same problem with a friends PC with Vista, he inadvertently down loaded a Ebay toolbar and it was annoying him , so we removed it via Add & Remove programs and it took all the std Icons off the desktop, also the task bar. I replaced the ones I could find , but then we did a " System Restore" and it brought everything back including the Ebay toolbar.
So I just hid it and left it be. Cheers Des.

 

had same problem when using another app

i had it happen to me and it was caused by a backdoor trojan virus.
i downloaded lastest FREE version of AVG free anti-virus software and ran it and it found two trojans, one call trojan backdoor and some other one. after running a high priority scan, the program delete them from my system, i restarted the computer and EVERYTHING went back to normal operation.
had to get to explorer thru task manager(ctrl/alt/delete)and browse desktop for my iexplorer.

 

what if unable to run explore.exe

I am not sure it is the right place to ask the question on the same problem. My wife's laptop is Presario 2800. Two days when she opened the computer, nothing shows up in the screen but the background picture. Except that problem, other things look fine. Pressing "Ctrl+Alt+Delete ", she can then use applications and check files. The antivirus warns that the computer is infected with some viruses. Unfortunately she did not write down their names.

Could some expert help her out of the headache?