Taskbar, Desktop Icons, start menu disappeared and right click stop

I have Vista Home Basic and last night after i uninstalled Norton Antivirus
2008 trial and restarted vista, everything disappeared. Start Menu, task Bar,
wallpaper and there is a black screen. The walll paper and gadgets are
displayed once i set them through control panel, but on system restart they
disappear again. Right Click stopped working. only windows explorer window
was opened and im scared to close it as i might loose all access to my
machine. all applications seem to work fine. Control panel also gives no
response to clicks to taskbar and start menu settings.

Did you use the Norton Removal Tool?
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...05033108162039

When you boot and see the black screen, press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Select the Task
Manager from the menu.

In the Task Manager, go to File/New. Type explorer.exe and click OK.

Does this cause the Desktop and TaskBar to appear?

Have you contacted Norton customer service support about any of this? I
work with Symantec (makers of Norton of course) and stumbled across your
post during a search.

Let me know if I can be of any assistance--feel free to PM me.

I had the same problem and your suggestion worked. What does this mean?
BTW- I also have a Norton product.

If this worked, it means that a critical registry value has been changed.

To fix this, you need to make a change to the registry.

Go to Start and type regedit.exe In the results, right click regedit.exe
and select the Run As Administrator option.

In the registry editor, navigate to the following Key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

With the Winlogon key selected, look in the right side window for the
'Shell" value.

Double click Shell. In the Value Data box, you should see Explorer.exe
and nothing else. If anythiong else is in that box, change it to
Explorer.exe and click OK.

Exit the registry editor and reboot the computer.

[AlexW]

I'm having the same problem as the OP, but Task Manager doesn't appear when I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, or even if I hit Ctrl+Shift+Del. Safe Mode shows the same screen, and Safe Mode with Command Menu doesn't give me the command menu, either. Anybody have any ideas?

whenever i swithc my pc on if i go to the start menu i can not load up desktop icons then if i load up desk top icons they will not cross off,please can some help me worried if i have virus as i have re installed vista and problem still occurs.

hey... i have already done all of that..
but my start menu still doesn't show up

when i tried... the "explorer.exe" thing, my document folder appeared, and i tried it again... but still...

My 6 year old was playing in Kidzui and it froze. I end the program.
After that I don't see any desktop items. Right click on the screen
doesn't do anything. I performed system restore to two earlier points
but nothing changed. I booted up in Safe Mode and there were no icons.
If I press CTL-ALT-Delete it doesn't bring up task manager.

I can use all my programs through Start menu. If type cmd.exe in Start
menu, it doesn't bring up anything.

Need help as all my data is on this machine. The task bar at the
bottom doesn't show much anymore, on the right side all the programs
that showed up at bootup don't show any more?

I can't be sure how to get your desktop and executables to work
properly, but if you are careful you will not lose your data.

For one thing, it is possible to make a copy of the hard drive onto
another drive. There's more than one method. But whatever you do, for
now, I suggest that you stop trying to boot the computer from the hard
drive.

If it were I, I would probably to this: remove the drive from the
computer it is in and connect it to another computer by means of a USB
to SATA or PATA adapter. I would then copy all of the drive's contents
to anther new (or at least empty) USB drive connected to the same
computer, using a program like EASEUS Disk Copy - a free download. Come
to think of it, EASEUS will let you copy the drive without removing it,
using a USB drive that you connect to that computer. That's because
EASEUS is used from a boot CD that doesn't require booting or trying to
boot from your hard drive.

Other people might post other approaches, and with any luck, there's
someone who knows how to get your computer working without losing
anything (I don't have that knowledge).

Once you're all squared away, you might consider instituting a regime
of backing up regularly.

[tryytr12321]

It is a trojan. to remove it download trojan remover (search with google). run a scan. it says when complete, you have to reboot your computer. after that, you got your desktop back..

[dwatkins741]

I was having the same problems. After buying Norton 2010 and restarting, I had no desktop icons or start menu. Right clicking was off. Luckily Norton was running, and there was a button on the program that opened a web browser. I found this page, and tried the Trojan Remover solution first. That was all it took. I ran Trojan Remover update, then scan. It checked the registry and lots of other stuff. To do this, of course I had to right click the Trojan Remover .exe files, and click Run as Admin. Trojan Remover found where the .exe association had been changed, and asked me if i wanted to correct it. When I did, it asked me to restart. I did. This restart took a little more time than usual. Before the desktop was loaded, a Trojan Remover window popped up that said it was finished. Everything is back to normal now. I don't have to Run as Admin anymore.