Help---**** No Desktop when loggin into W2K 3

[PalmIdiot]

I log into a laptop, both on and off the network, when I log in I see a very small box flash in the top left hand corner and than no desktop loads. If I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, I get access to the task box, I can enter the task manager and browser my drive, and everything on the screen looks fine and normal sized, however there is still no desktop/icons. I have tried creating new profiles, however, they all show up with no desktop. Has anyone seen this or have any idea why it may be happening??? Thanks for any help or advice.

 

[RayWL]

My W2000 Profess PC had the exact same problem of no desktop and no taskbar after a small icon appeared and disappeared in top left corner-- only had the background picture. I was able to delete explorer.exe in the WINNT\system32 directory through the Task Manager, but only if I did not open the desktop through the Task Manager. If I hit the New Task button in Task Manager to browse my directories, the desktop appeared, and presumable, that prevented me from deleting the file since it "was in use". I deleted the explorer.exe by Ctrl+Alt+Del to open Task Manager and hitting the Browse button (and not New Task). This allowed me to browse to the file without opening the desktop, right-click and delete the file. Restarted and the PC works fine now. Also, I did this after booting to Safe Mode (F8) with Command Prompt, but that might not have been neccessary (I'm not sure), as long as the Browse button in Task Manager was used (to prevent desktop from opening). 'Hope this helps someone, as this forum pointed me in the right direction.

 

[Mattb7]

Has anyone heard what virus is causing this??

 

[CharlieJax]

This is the Aplore virus:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.aplore@mm.html

CJ

Don't drink and post, save that for driving home!

 

[RayWL]

In my earlier reply, I meant to say, in the Task Manager, first click on the New Task button, then click the Browse button to browse to the bad explorer.exe file while the desktop remains hidden, then delete the file. I haven't tried editing the registry, like the symantic.com site says. Sorry for any confusion (and for misspelling necessary and presumably).

 

[nrwetzel]

I have the same exact problem (no desktop icons or start menu), but I am using Win XP Home. Any clues as to how I can fix my problem? I found the explorer.exe file under my Windows directory and also in the ServicePackFiles/i386 directory, but neither of them have a current timestamp and I have only been having this problem since yesterday. I am thinking I have a virus of some type, but I have run both PcCillin and Norton Antivirus and found no bad files. Any ideas??

 

[theef]

this is virus is pretty common for people who use IRC. Or other file sharing programs (Kazaa etc.). What this virus actually does is logs on to IRC, joins the server it was programmed to, then logs into a specific room. That little box you see on the corner when you boot up is the program working its magic. It goes by so quick, its gone as soon as it opens. One quick way of knowing if you have this virus or not is if your desktop will not fully load up. And like everyone says in the previous posts just hit ALT + CTRL + DEL then go to taskmanager, go under file, new task(run...), browse, then look into your windows directory, then look in system32 directory, find the file called explorer.exe and delete, but DO NOT and i cant stress enough DO NOT delete the explorer.exe file in your main winnt directory!!!!!!!. And that should fix your problem. If you care to find out a little bit more about this virus read a little further down.

This virus was created and born through irc. Specific details on this virus is it will open a backdoor, logs you on to irc. Goes into the room it was programmed to, then waits for its master/masters. Anyone who has this virus will not know what's going on as all this is happening in the background of course. After you have joined the room, and the author of the virus checks the room and see's theres enough people in there. And thats when the damage begins. The person will use your bandwidth and start DOS (denial of service) attacks on various networks/sites.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/02/09/cyber.attacks.01/index.html.

So0o0o0o if you notice a sluggish performance on your bandwidth might wanna check for that file to be on the safe side. And on another note this file will also attempt to delete all your hard drives\network shared hard drives.

 

[dlorimer]

I am indebted to the contributions above which enabled me to recover my missing desktop. I was also unable to delete the offending explorer.exe using task manager and resorted to selecting Windows during startup which leads to the dos prompt. The commands 'cd winnt' then 'cd system32' then 'erase explorer.exe' followed by re-boot returned everything to normality.

 

[jackriley]

Much thanks to everyone who responded to this thread!
I was just about to pay someone to try and fix my problem.
I had to boot into safe mode with the ms-dos option.
Then I moved to c:\winnt\system32 and deleted the explorer.exe file. Re-boot and everything was fine.
NOTE: I tried doing a CTRL-ATL-DEL and doing a file > new task, but file was in use and systme wouldn't let me delete it. Someone mentioned not doing a new task and simply browsing to the file and deleting it but there is no way to do that.
Thanks again!

 

[raen]

1.Try click with rigth button of mouse in desktop, and see the options in active desktop and you click "show web contents" and then go again there and click "show desktop icons"

If not that try this:
2. try to delete the file "shelliconcache" (if this file is corrupted icons dont show) that is HIDDEN in windows/winnt directory, reeboot and see if worked (when windows reeboot he creates the file again).

If not this maybe virus, try norton antivirus 2003.

 

[Mattb7]

if you read the rest of the posts, it is a virus- the aplore virus. It doesnt have anyhting to do with the shelliconcache, and you cant right click.

 

[CSummers]

Same Exact problem, except that I did not see a little box pop up in any corner. When I looked at the files in the winnt/system32 folder, there was also a file eexplore.exe and the 528k sized file explore.exe -deleted both and now it is fine.

 

[LesNicholls]

I found the same, ermoving explorer.exe from System32 folder and deleting any weird looking registry entries from HKLM/Software/microsoft/windows/surrent version/run and maybe the run once folder and you get your desktop back and no mIRC boxes. Thanks to everyone who made these sugggestions.

 

[Thousandislands]

I am having a similar problem on windows XP. No icons, No taskbar, can't right click. Taskmanager allows me in, however there is no explorer.exe (528KB) in the system 32 folder. Has anyone heard of any variants of this trojan for windows XP? Any suggestions?

 

[nrwetzel]

Thousandislands - I was having the exact same problem in XP. From my research, I believe it was a virus that I received while using file-sharing programs (specifically winmx in my case). My computer would show no icons, and then lock up continually while I used my computer (b/c someone else was essentially stealing my bandwidth). If you do End Process on your expolorer.exe and then restart the program using File-New Task, you can get your performance back.. but I was never able to find a way to restore the computer. Eventually I had to reimage the machine. If you find something better, please let me know for the future. Since then I bought a firewall program and I've been able to use file-sharing with no problems.

 

[saher16]

same problem with xp what to do?????????????????????????????there is no explorer.exe in my system32

 

[RG81]

i have the same problem with xp too. can somebody plz help me? :/
i also had an virus called something like win32/hantaner....also a virus from kazaa
does anybody which file i have to delete, cause there s no explorer.exe in the sytsem32 directory...
i hope somebody replies...thx

 

[MaxKill]

Thanks for the help guys!

I now identified that i have a virus due to this post.

I also noticed a few things...

When you first bootup and have no desktop, you can Ctrl-Alt-Del and click task manager... then go to file and select New Task. Type "control" and your desktop appears. Once inside I found that the virus was stored in the root directory of both my hard drives by doing a search for explorer.exe... the infected version had a different icon and was hidden.

A free virus scan like the one below should clear things up for you. Hope this post helps!

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

Max

 

[pkuncis]

I had this same problem with Win2k. I fixed it by upgrading from IE 5.5 to IE 6.0. I got the desktop back. I still had serious corruption of Windows components and such (couldn't open up the Start Button, etc). But I had functionality to save what I had to off of the PC.

 

[PalmIdiot]

pkuncis,

Read all the posts above for how to totally resolve problem with Win2k. I had the problem on Win2k