Blank screen after starting Windows XP

I am running Windows XP Pro on my system. Yesterday, when I started my computer, I didn't found any desktop icon appearing on the screen, not even START menu. I was getting a plain blank screen with only the mouse pointer.

Although I can see the mouse but I was not able to get the options that usually appears when we right-click on the desktop. I could go to Task Manager by Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch applications with the "New Task" button. But it seems to be a very long route.

Can anyone help me on this?

Have you done any overclocking on your system? If yes, reset it to default settings and see what happens.

Hope this link will help you.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q314503

IMO Explorer.exe would have been not started.

Run Explorer.exe from Task Manager.

If you are getting some error try to System Restore which may work.

I had the similar issue and after struggling to fix it the whole night , i came out with a solution that worked for me.

what i did

1.connected the hard disk to another pc as secondary drive 'S' drive or boot with dos boot if its a fat 32 partition
2. renamed the windows folder as windows1 in the 'S' drive
3. copied another windows folder to the 'S' drive
4. copied all the existing files in (windows1 folder) 'S' drive WINDOWS1\system32\config to (windows folder) 'S' drive\WINDOWS\system32\config
5. reconnect the hard disk / reboot the pc

if this didnt work then run window xp installation in repair mode and it should fix it.