Arggh! Lost Windows 2000 Desktop

Factual Questions
1

The problem:

  • Brought W2K out of hibernate.
  • Had a normal desktop, was getting email in brower, when I lost the desktop, and all ability to interact with computer. Had a blank background screen.
  • Had to power cycle, obviously.
  • Came back with blank background screen. Actually, I get a login screen, and after I’m logged in, the screen is blank (and yes, I tried logging in as different users).
  • I can interact by bringing up Task Manager and starting a process, but that’s all.
  • Rebooting and using F5 for last good profile didn’t help (didn’t try Safe Mode, as what’s the point?)

How do I get my desktop back? Do I need to do a repair installation, or is there a trick here?

2

What happens if you bring up Task Manager and start explorer.exe?

3

I get explorer.

4

Explorer is the desktop.

Are you typing explorer.exe, or iexplore.exe?

-FrL-

5

Have to recheck after I get home. I think I did indeed do iexplore.

I thought explorer.exe was the file manager, though. Anyway, I’ll know in an hour or so.

6

Well, in windows XP explorer.exe is Windows’ GUI. Maybe different in windows 2000.

-FrL-

7

Okay, I must have done iexplore before.

With explorer, I get an app error saying the instruction at blah blah could not access memory location 0x00000011. VStudio say the problem’s in ntdll.dll. Maybe just a repair install will handle the problem. I’ll try tomorrow if I can find a disk. Unless you know something further, that is.

8

Just to clarify a minor point, but for WinNT, 2000, and XP, explorer.exe is both the desktop and the file manager app. Normally it gets started in show-desktop mode during bootup & runs until shutdown. Additional copies are started in file manager mode by the user as needed.

In a non-broken system occasionally the desktop can hang. Using task manager to kill the explorer process results in the screen going blank for a few seconds, then the OS auto-restarts the desktop explorer & you’re back in business. In a broken system …???

9

You could also try running sfc /scannow from Task Manager. It may prompt you to insert your Windows CD. It will then scan all protected system files and replace any that are corrupted.

A repair install is probably the way to go though.