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(Solved) - windows 7 64 bit lost taskbar, start menu and desktop icons

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Boggin:
I take it Startup Repair was useless as well ?

Well, we'll see what the bootrec command can achieve, but sometimes running an offboot sfc /scannow can resolve if it's the system files that are corrupt even though you've already run that within Windows.

To do that, boot up with the install disk and navigate to the RE/Command Prompt and enter -

bcdedit |find "osdevice" (that's a Pipe symbol before find)

Then using whichever partition letter that gives, enter (assuming C: )

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\Windows

And that will give its report just as it does when done within Windows.

Did the icon rebuild patch/steps have any effect ?

installer69:
Yup, startup repair useless. Bootrec useless. Tried creating another account and logging in - same.
Already tried an off boot SFC which found no issues.
Icon rebuild - no effect

Boggin:
This is why it's best to create regular system images - one would certainly have been useful right now  :smiley:

installer69:
You're not wrong. I rue the days I closed the nag screen that asked if I wanted to make a backup.
The 'only' good point is that I have lost nothing. With effort I can still launch all my programs but it really is painful when you are used to using the GUI.
I leave linux for work.

Shane:
OK I got him fixed :-)

Took me a little while but I found the problem, and honestly it didnt stand out at all.

When you open regedit and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
"Shell"="explorer.exe"

Just like it should. So since it showed the right value I didn't touch it. I then loaded up process monitor and watched everything that explorer.exe touched when starting up.

When explorer.exe got to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and looked at the shell vaule it got something different!
Process monitor reported this
Type: REG_SZ, Length: 24, Data: explorer.exeL

Notice the L at the end of it, but I double checked regedit and there was no L.

So in regedit I went ahead and changed the shell value to explorer.exe1 and saved it then changed it back to explorer.exe and saved it. I did this to force regedit to write the value.

Then I started explorer.exe and the desktop appeared. I have no clue why regedit wasnt showing the L, but when I changed the value it corrected it and started working.

I am adding that shell value to the next update of Windows Repair, so if it happens to anyone else WR will be able to fix it :-)

Shane

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