This is on my parents computer and I cannot figure out why it is doing this. They said it was running a little slow and so I went over there and it was running fine just a little slow at opening stuff so I just restarted it and it ran checkdsk starting up win xp pro it finished with that and I think it said there was some errors in that but I didnt look much at it and it proceded to startup and you get all the usual little boxes that say loading your settings bla bla bla but the background is blank no desktop icons no taskbar at the bottom the curser is there and you can move it around but it does not select anything. Pressing the windows key does nothing. I can do ctrl alt del. and the box comes up and I can go into task manager and under the processes it looks like stuff has loaded like normal as far as i could tell. and so I tried to use task manager to run a new task and certain programs I can get to open up and run like normal but a lot will not. I cannot load internet explorer threw it or windows exporer. I restarted in safe mode and it does the same exact think as it did in normal. I've ran chkdsk again and it goes threw it and finishes and it still does it. I went to restore to previously known good condition and it does nothing. I cant run system restore from the taskmanager. Im at a loss of what to do to fix this. There are some programs on there that i really need for my dads farm records because the program will not backup anything in this state and i cant just copy the files from it now and erase everything and start over. I have no idea whats going on with this so any kind of advice would be greatly appriciated. thanks

Try system restore from safe mode command prompt.

Here is a detailed instruction: 1. Restart your computer, and then press F8 during the initial startup to start your computer in Safe Mode with a command prompt. 2. Log on to your computer with an administrator account or with an account that has administrator credentials. 3. Type the following command at a command prompt, and then press ENTER: %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe 4. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to restore your computer to an earlier state.

When I go into safe mode it still loads up the same way with no explorer. i can ctrl alt del and go into command prompt but the system restore will not load like i said above. sfc /scannow has been no help for me either