Desktop background only on bootup, no Icons or Start bar

D

Direwolf20

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 10, 2004
Messages
2,467
Ok guys, I've got a wierd problem here where I work, let me explain.

Most of our users are running Windows XP (SP1), and some are still on Win2k (Most recent SP). We're on a novell network (4.90 SP2), and are using eTrust anti-virus.

Some of the users who have windows XP (not all) randomly get the background only after they login to novell. Their Icons and Start menu never appear. The current work around that I figured out was to ctrl-alt-del, New Task, and then run explorer. This suddenly makes their icons and start menu appear. This doesn't appear to happen with Windows 2000.

This has never happened on my computer, but happens to another employee at least 1-2 times per week. I've seen it happen very sporadically to other users (maybe once in the past 6 months). Theres nothing in the event log, and theres no adware or spyware on the machines, I've even seen this happen on a fresh image.

Any of you guys ever seen something like this, and maybe know what could be causing it?
 
Anytime I've seen something like that, it was traced back to a driver not loading correctly. There's no log of it, or any way to pinpoint which one, besides upgrading each and every one of them at a time. It never acted like a PC with a ton starting up, where it would eventually load. It would sit and hang like that.

It was never the video drivers. Most often, it was the NIC.
 
Hmm, thats possible, I'll give that a try. I did forget to mention that its happened on a bunch of different hardware setups.

Oddly though, theres some groups of computers with all the same hardware, and the same image, but only some have the problem.

Let me see if this fixes the one who has it most often. Thanks bud!
 
Direwolf20 said:
Oddly though, theres some groups of computers with all the same hardware, and the same image, but only some have the problem.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, that's not all that odd!
 
deadoralive said:
try starting explorer.exe from task manager, manually.
Click to expand...

Aye, thats the work around that I mentioned I've been doing. What I'm trying to do is prevent this from happening in the first place.
 
About the ones that all have the same hardware and the same image, could it possibly be caused by a similar application they are running? Is it possible to query the software on the machines that are having the problem and isolate an app that the ones that all have the problem have loaded and the ones that don't have the app aren't having?

I find it strange that there's no entry for any problems in the event log. If it WAS the NIC as someone suggested (djnes?) then it would definately be saying something in regards to that from my experience.

I had a similar problem at my last place where this was happening with WIN2K folks and their profiles would become corrupt. We would move their profile out of "Documents and Settings" and then have them re-log back in to create a new one, then log them off and copy/paste everything but the ntuser.dat and ntuser.ini files (which are hidden) and then they would have all the settings back and their data but wouldn't hang up at login anymore.

We found this to be occuring on random machines with different hardware/images when we were pushing MS Updates...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top