At startup desktop only show a picture and NOTHING else?!

At startup desktop only show a picture and NOTHING else?!

I have tried this 3 times now with my HP 3 ghz dualcore PC, and everytime I have tried to repair windows etc. but no use and have always ended up reinstalling the entire windows to get windows XP professional to work again.

I never had this problem with my old PC´s and just wonder what can cause this, and even more important what I can do when / if this happens again!?

The only thing I have been able to activate is the hotkey functions like ctrl+alt+del and win+u etc.

Maby its the ATI card or IE that gets ******* up somehow? I can´t even start windows in safemode or restore from last time windows was working, because it looks like windows really think everything is working just fine.

Please help me by providing some information before this happens agan. As said: Everything works just fine, I can restart the PC and everything and then suddenly without any aparant reason this just happens when starting up the PC. I just don´t understand why OR what to do about this.

Thank you.

 

woow....

 

My mother's machine is doing the same thing. Only thing I can get to is Task Manager.
When I try to run a new task and browse to C:\Windows\explorer.exe it tells me "Windows can not access the specified Device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access this item. "

This is in safe mode under administrator or Normal.

I'll dive into the links above and report back.

 

Tried the clean boot procedure. No joy.

 

Well it had everyone with full permissions but I added Administrator with full permissions and now it works. Running an Avast Boot scan now to see what it finds.

I have a sinking feeling that every .exe is going to be the same way because Avast gave me the same error till I reinstalled it.
More to come thanks!

 

Thanks for all the replys but as said:
Computer Experience:
beginner

Reading all these huge technical documents I don´t really understand anyway doesn´t help me much.

To Scott Smith: The priviose owner of the computer said he had the same problem like me with this PC, and he used to press ctrl+alt+del and "run" but couldn´t remember what the specifik command was "something starting with "O" I think" (thats what he said).

I don´t know why this PC does this sometimes, would be nice to know how to fix it next time it does it insted of keep reinstalling windows - Knowing what he ran would also be nice, but even more nice to just prevent this from happening ever again really!

 

The file doesn´t exist on my PC - properly because I use a Danish version of XP I guess? Thanks anyway for your consern.

 

oh, ok its scanning now. So I should do this when then desktop dissaperes again you say? As said; I can´t even get it to show up in safe mode when it does that + a repair with the windows CD wont help eighter. The former owner of the PC had same problem as me, but used to get it started by pressing ctrl+alt+delete and "run" something, but he can´t remember what it was other than he think it starts with "O" !? But I don´t know...

 

Taking ownership of explorer.exe fixed my issue but I'm curious of how that ever occurred in the first place.