no icons no taskbar on bootup

[travistee]

When I boot up the system I get the choices of users, then it doesn't get past the background image. Nothing else happens. No icons , no start butten, etc.
However it doesn't happen everytime.
It was working ok for a few weeks.

System has XP Home on a disk that was cloned from a Sony Vaio laptop.
Most of the sony apps were uninstalled.
A new XP key was used.
The laptop had SP2, SP3 was installed on this one
Asus P5K-E
Asus AIsuite with NOS for overclocking is being used, set to auto.

Details of what happened:
1. could not get into administrator account.
2. got into limited account that was never used before.
3. tried administrator account again, and got in.
4. set up a second administrator account.
5. could not get into all three of them.
6. tried again and got into the original administrator account.
7. running anti virus etc.
8. Also having a problem getting it to boot from the CD. It recognizes the CD
but doesn't see any files on the CD in explorer.
I ran some AV/AM but it didn't find anything yet.
Ran CA, A2free, Adaware, ESET online scanner, spybot

[Toasty]

Re: no icons no taskbar on bootup

Turn off AI NOS overclocking, see what happens.
Turn off any overclocking adjustments in BIOS.

Does it/Can you get into safe mode?

[Scenic]

Re: no icons no taskbar on bootup

if you're on the desktop without icons and stuff, open the taskmanager (ctrl alt del), file -> new task -> explorer [enter]
you may need to kill the zombie-explorers first.. but this usually works..

sometimes the explorer just fails to start for no apparent reason, so all you get is an empty desktop without icons & the taskbar.. (works fine when doing it manually like described above though..)


BTW: reading about all the other bugs, i'd say it's time for a fresh XP install..

[travistee]

Re: no icons no taskbar on bootup

Actually it is a fresh xp install.
It was a repair install over the original which came from the laptop.

I have the NOS off now. Its all default bios now, except for the boot sequence.

When I press F8 to try to get into safe mode, I get choices of which disk to boot from but it doesn't go into safe mode.

What are these zombie explorers?
Should Av get rid of those.
So far my AV/AM cant find anything.

I think this started after I tried to set the audio to analog.
I disabled HDMI in bios, and reinstalled the sound software.
My video card has HDMI.
It was setting the bios back to HDMI enabled by itself, so I left it that way
and uninstalled the sound software. This didn't help.

[Scenic]

Re: no icons no taskbar on bootup

with zombie-explorers i meant the explorer.exe's in the taskmanager which are running, but don't show up (if there are any..)

edit: when on empty desktop

[travistee]

Re: no icons no taskbar on bootup

I think the problem was caused by conflicts with the audio drivers.

I have a Palit video card that has HDMI, and sound on the mobo.

The ATI installation for the video card installs its realtek audio drivers which was ok when I used the HDMI.
When I wanted to change to analog sound and not use the HDMI I installed the soundmax drivers for the mobo.
That caused the conflict that apparently caused the problem.
I don't know why it started up properly sometimes.

It seems ok now.

[pantherts]

Re: no icons no taskbar on bootup

travistee, just to let you know, the reason you are getting the F8 boot from device prompt is because Asus has that function key mapped for the boot selection screen on the motherboard. What you have to do if you ever want/need to access Safe Mode in the future is wait until after the main BIOS post screen disappears and then start clicking F8. This will allow the BIOS initialization to do its thing and when you press F8 after this Windows will have taken over and it will prompt you with the Safe Mode options. In short, wait until after the main BIOS screen disappears then start pressing F8.