blank screen

[joedarcy]

Hi,

My PC starts up alright and appears to load everything, but after it finishes loading I'm left with the microsoft background with nothing else. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Bryce W]

It sounds like explorer.exe isnt loading (the windows desktop, start menu, icons etc... NOT Internet Explorer). This usually happens when a registry or something got damaged by a virus, a corruption of some kind or installing/removing certain software (McAfee or Norton Antivirus are common culprits).

Your best bet for fixing this is to go into Windows Safe Mode and do a system restore.

I am assuming your system has Windows XP.
To get into safe mode, press F8 just before the Windows XP logo starts up and choose "Safe Mode". If XP loads correctly (everything will be big and look funky though) it will tell you that you are in safemode and wether you want to continue working in it.
Click NO and it will load system restore.
Choose "Restore my Computer to an earlier time" and press Next

In the calendar part, choose a date in bold that was before the date you had the problem. Select that date and press Next. Then follow the prompts.