Start Bar and Icons Gone from Desktop

[ElCapichan]

I have a laptop that just today decided to make the start bar and all the icons on the desktop disappear. When Windows starts, they appear briefly, then flicker away then back several times and finally vanish for good. It's not like they are just invisible. Double clicking where there were does nothing. The only way to open things is using ctrl alt dlt and telling it what programs to run.

Restarting does nothing to fix this. Is it something that can be fixed easily, should I try to just reformat, or is it a much worse problem? Thanks for any help.

[Razor Ramon]

Your GUI may be fucked. What OS?

[Dyne]

You can ctrl/alt/del to get to task manager. Then file>new task (run). Type explorer.exe. Explorer should come back on. Chances are you have a bastard malware that's taking over your UI. I just cleaned a friends machine of this this past weekend as a matter of fact.

Run anti-malware to get rid of it.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

If explorer stays off you'll have to launch anti-malware the same way I told you to restart Explorer. This time go to File>New task and then browse for the installer and then for the shortcut once you get it installed.

Get a hardware firewall (router) and quit looking at dumb shit.

[ElCapichan]

Get a hardware firewall (router) and quit looking at dumb shit.

I'm not the one using it rtard.

[Dyne]

Do NOT bite the hand that feeds you!

[Josh]

[Razor Ramon]

I was going to do it, but it seemed too obvious.

[cka]

thieves inside your monitor are stealing them

also, does hovering the mouse near the bottom of the screen make them pop up? if it does that means you have the taskbar set to auto hide

[ElCapichan]

thieves inside your monitor are stealing them

also, does hovering the mouse near the bottom of the screen make them pop up? if it does that means you have the taskbar set to auto hide

Nope. It's not picking up anything. Won't even let me do a drag select (no dotted line box shows up). I tried running explorer.exe and the task bar pops up then disappears. It's been a long time since it's last reformat, and needs one regardless, so once I find the recovery discs, I'm just going to reformat. My step dad is using it for photoshop and has everything backed up on an external anyways, so it's not like he is losing anything.

[cka]

yeah if that's happening explorer is crashing for whatever reason (probably spyware)