Icons and start menu lost on my windows XP PC. I can only open a site through Task Manager. Tried several times to restart computer but icons did not appear.
Backup all your files (which should really be already backed up) then re-install XP or run factory recovery which does the same thing.
A few suggestions: How much time do you give it before giving up? Someone dropped off a computer that was doing that but it was just because it was booting up extrememly slow (too little ram and too much junk loading). It took at least 5 minutes for the icons to show up.
I'm not sure this will help but you can try it. If you can open 'taskbar and start menu':
check 'lock the taskbar'
uncheck 'auto-hide the taskbar'
check 'keep the taskbar on top of other windows'
uncheck 'group similar taskbar buttons'and farther down:
uncheck 'hide inactive icons'.
What happens if you boot to safe mode?
If you can get to windows system restore--either through normal or safe mode--you can try that, choosing a date from before the problem started.
Phill22 How can you run factory recovery? Please advise.
If all else fails and this happened fairly recently you can even do System Restore from Command prompt, like this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304449You choose a date before the problem came along. This retains your own stuff and settings. All you need to do is add any updates or programs that were added since then.
Always pop back and let us know the outcome - thanks
message edited by Derek
Windows XP has a nag screen that says you have unused icons, would you like them removed. If you said yes to that, then you may have removed them yourself. At any rate most icons can be easily recreated. They are nothing more than shortcuts to the program. If you post which icons are missing we can help you make new ones.
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