Member Avatar for Dogbite

I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop. When i bootup everything is is fine,My Backgroung and Icon all show up. A minute later my Icon and Task bar disappear and dont come back.You have to reboot to get them back for a minute You have to be quick to open a program. The program runs fine. What do I need to do to keep my Icon on the desktop.

  • 2 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 124 Views
  • 8 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Dogbite

Dani AI

Generated

Thread note for (and following 's malware/log-scan suggestion): the symptoms — desktop and taskbar present at boot, then disappearing after a minute — most often point to Explorer instability (crash or restart) or a third-party shell extension/startup process interfering with the shell. Start by capturing what actually happens when the UI vanishes rather than rebooting immediately: open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and look for explorer.exe. If it is not present, launching a new task explorer.exe will restore the desktop temporarily; if it is present, killing and restarting it can reveal whether explorer is repeatedly crashing. Note timestamps so they can be correlated with Event Viewer entries.

Further diagnostic steps (in order of low-to-higher intrusiveness): examine Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) under Application for errors at the time the UI disappears (faulting module names are especially useful); run System File Checker to rule out corrupted system files; perform a Clean Boot via msconfig (hide Microsoft services, disable the rest) to see if a non-Microsoft service or startup item is the trigger; test in Safe Mode and with a newly created user profile to check for profile-specific corruption. Third-party shell extensions commonly cause explorer crashes — use NirSoft ShellExView to disable non-Microsoft shell extensions temporarily and retest (ShellExView).

Additional practical notes: on older laptops like the Inspiron 8100, display driver faults or vendor utilities can destabilize the shell, so check Device Manager for driver errors and consider updating or rolling back the video driver. Before editing startup items or the registry, create a System Restore point. Useful diagnostic artifacts to collect for deeper help: MBAM scan log, HijackThis log (as recommended), Event Viewer error text with timestamps, and a list of non-Microsoft startup items from msconfig.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for gerbil

Something is slapping explorer.exe [your GUI] silly... see what this turns up, for a start:
==Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Malwarebytes_Anti-Malware_d5756.html
or: http://www.besttechie.net/tools/mbam-setup.exe
=Dclick that file to install the application and ensure that it is set to update and start, else start it via the icon.
Select "Perform Full Scan", then click Scan; the application will guide you through the remaining steps.
Make sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
Post the Notepad log [it is also saved under Logs tab in MBAM].
And then, so we are not totally blind:
==download hijackthis: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5554.html
-copy it to a new FOLDER placed either alongside your program files or on your desktop and then... rename hijackthis.exe to imabunny.exe
-in that folder start HijackThis by dclicking the .exe; now close ALL other applications and any open windows including the explorer window containing HijackThis.
-click the Scan and Save a Logfile button. Post the log here.

Member Avatar for Dogbite

I am going out of town for a few days, will try when I return, and post results. Thanks for the help.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.