OS: XP professional My desktop icons and taskbar appears for a second after I reboot, but then disappear. I am left with just the wallpaper. right click does not work. Using taskmanager -> new task ->explorer results with the same thing: a one second desktop which goes into wallpaper only. As far as I can tell this is not related to the SYSU.exe DDM virus that I saw on other sites. several spyware detection softwares, as well as antivirus, starting in safemode, and system restore did not work. What can I do to fix this??? please help.

Well Michelle, looks like you've really done it this time, WHAT DID YOU DO!! LOL :D only jokin, here is what you should do:- First go to safe mode and select the option on last known good configuration and see if your desktop icons and windows explorer shows itself, if that doesn't help. Go into the bios force the computer to boot fron cd (with the xp cd in the drive) do an install you will be asked if you want to install or repair, hit install, at the second install or repair prompt hit repair, both ways sfc or repair from cd will repair your file system without losing data. This should do the trick, let us know how it went. Hope That Helps Kevin.

Michelle: more ideas at: http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/74450.html let us know what worked for you...