Resolved xp does not completely load

I have two pcs with windows xp and both fail to completely load sometimes. It goes through the welcome screen and loads the wallpaper but not the desktop (icons) or the start bar at bottom of screen. Control alt delete brings up the task menu and you can restart from there. Sometimes it takes several times before it completely loads. So far both pcs do eventually load all of xp. Where do I start? I do not think it is a virus as we have protection and routinely scan. Any help is appreciated. Janet

 

Most people don't think that they have a virus/malware/spyware when their PC does weird things because they said that they scan and are clean. A trip to the Malware section here and follow the instructions will tell them a lot about your PC and if you are really clean.

 

No special desk top themes, and have not tried to just run explorer.exe to finish the desktop load. Thanks for the tip. Also, I will run it through a more rigorous scan. My pc specs are in my profile but I need to do the link suggestion. The odd thing about the incomplete bootup, is that it happens on my husbands pc and my pc intermittantly with both running xp. It could be a couple weeks before it boots up incompletely again - the last couple of days it booted up fine. I will try some of the suggestions and thanks again to all who responded.

 

pc does not completely load

My pc is virus free. I found just running explorer.exe when it does not load to be the easiest solution. You need to bring up task manager to do that and you do have to load programs set to load at startup after explorer finishes. problem resolved.