Help! "Start" button in Windows XP gone! Desktop icons have mysterious glow!

[jdm]

Hi, Sorry for this sort of post. I'm running XP Pro and just a while ago I went to do a weekly defrag under System Tools and my machine suddenly rebooted and then upon rebooting I was prompted for a User ID and Password!!!

This has never happened before. When my desktop finally appears, the taskbar is a gray color with no icons on the taskbar. However, if I hover my mouse around near the bottom left corner of the screen, it's clear that the programs are there and that they work.

All the icons on my desktop are surrounded by a strange glow / other-worldy outline!!!!!

I have no start button otherwise I would try to do a system restore.

If anyone can help, I'd be most grateful for your reply. Many thanks.

I know someone will say to just buy a Mac, but right now I have Windows!!! :)

I just want to get back to where I was an hour ago, if that's possible.

Thank you for reading this post.

[shibumi]

Wish I could help, but I just spent 7 Hours trying to install the %#@$!!!*&^?!?#$%@&%! XP Service Pack, and then had to uninstall it!

MAC is looking better all the time!

[jdm]

I'll have to get you a screen capture of what my computer screen looks like. It's too much. I installed SP2 a few months ago. I had trouble with it at first; I had to uninstall it twice and then the third time was the charm!!!

[HairOfTheDog]

Desktop icons have mysterious glow!

Do they have a ~host~ around them?

[ScottM1968]

Restart your computer and get into safe mode by holding down on F8.

More details are available here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222

Do a virus scan if you can from the safe mode boot. You won't have access to the internet, so you can head to bed.

Finally, drag your pointer to the very bottom of the screen. While pressing the left mouse button, drag your mouse upward. This may fix your "Start" button problem.

[kezekiel]

An incomplete defrag can kill your hard drive. This happened to me a year ago, and I lost everything. Sounds like you aren't in as bad a shape as I was.

Backup your data, reformat your drive, and reinstall XP and your programs. Your system will run a lot better anyway.

[jdm]

I think I'm screwed. I can't even open up a JPG file on my desktop. It says "reinstall app(lication)."

[Brett66]

Hmmm, that's odd, almost sounds like a virus. Maybe you could boot with a start up disk and try to fix it through text commands.

[jdm]

Thanks, Scott. I'll try that. I remember going into safe mode via MSCONFIG, at times, but I can't even get into start > "run" right now. Even the volume icon near the clock doesn't work.

[HairOfTheDog]

I wonder if you haven't managed to size your desktop resolution to a nonstandard size not appropriate for your monitor. Can you get to that control panel? Right click the desktop - properties - settings.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Turn your PC off and call this guy.

Good luck.

[HairOfTheDog]

Why do you defrag every week? A bit obsessive isn't it?

[ScottM1968]

If your hard drive is formatted as NTFS, you are likely fine. FAT32 is a more fragile drive format; however, defrag should let your computer work just fine even if it fails because it copies before erasing/overwriting.

You are still able to boot up, so it is likely your loss is minimal if at all.

[Not A Snowbird]

Try a system restore. It worked for me when my cat turned my display 90 degrees by sitting on my keyboard.

[Covenantor]

I "feel your pain" having just re-installed XP-Pro just a few days ago.

The way you describe the event I wonder if you didn't have a power problem. Do you have your system on a UPS?

[shibumi]

Was that John Kerry's Foreign Affairs advisor?!?

(Or the minister that married him to Lady Ketchup?)

[ScottM1968]

System Restore is a good suggestion if it isn't turned off. It isn't perfect, but can be helpful if applications were changed. I wouldn't think it would fix a corrupt file allocation table, though.

To get to it without the Start button, go into your "My Computer" icon and go into the Control Panel there.

[Americanchild]

The disappearing icons in the taskbar is an Explorer crash that happens in XP on ocassion. The programs are still running, but it doesn't reload all the icons when it reboots itself. You can drag the Start button back up like someone suggested or just restart with ctrl + alt+ delete ( twice). Your "glowing" icons sound like a feature of XP has been turned on accidently. Right click the desktop and choose properties to adjust the look.

it wouldn't hurt to do a scandisk next time you restart. You can set it to do this automatically by going into My computer, choose tools, choose scandisk. It will think about it a minute, then tell you it doesn't have the resources right now. You will have the option to run it on restart. Choose yes/ok

[jdm]

To get to it without the Start button, go into your "My Computer" icon and go into the Control Panel there.

I'm inside the control panel under "system" -- I can't find a way to restore, though. I have 4 tabs: hardware, advanced, system restore and remote. When going to the system restore tab, there's not really an option there to undo anything. Perhaps I'm looking under the wrong icon/tab in the control panel. Thanks again for your posts, everyone.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just spent the two days after Thansgiving trying to recover my daughters computer from all kinds of wierd malware....finally gave up and reformatted every thing , bought a new copy of XP with SP2 and reinstalled XP and most of the applications she wanted and it seems to be going well...

How do you protect yourself from the bad stuff on the internet?