Windows boots, but no taskbar or icons???

[pinhead]

OK.

I've had at least 20 machines come in in the past week with the exact same symptoms. All systems are running Windows 98 except one (Windows NT 4.0).
Each machine will boot to Windows. It gets to the login screen and whether you enter the password and say OK or just hit cancel, the taskbar flashes up for a split second and then goes away. No icons are present and control alt delete shows nothing running in the background. The odd part is that the same thing happens in safe mode. Previously, I've just loaded Win98 over top and that will fix the problem, but I had several come back with the same issue within days of the fix. I've scanned for viruses and adaware by slaving the drive to another system, and they all come up clean. Anybody else see this or hear of it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and have a great FRIDAY!!!

Definitely feeling the need to drink large quantities of alcoholic beverages right now...

[NooNoo]

if you hit the windows key what happens?

Checked the autoexec and config sys, Win.ini and system.ini?

[gazzak]

Try this...
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;247502

or this...
http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/tec112402.html

or this...
http://forums.techguy.org/showthread...hlight=taskbar

[geoscomp]

one of the things besides a virus that may be making this happen is a corrupt or otherwise overloaded or damaged icon cache..try deleting the file after you reinstall windows and see if the problem still comes back..although if there are that many in your area I would suspect malware of some sort

[geeksRus]

had 3 this week like that. hmmm...all were subscribers to Charter Pipeline and all had remnants of a failed ie6 update and some hosed files.

[ShadowWynd]

We've had our share of these as well. So far, overlays have solved most of them. No virus or malware that we have been able to find. It went from being fairly rare to several in the shop at once and we started growing suspicious, but we haven't determined a source yet.

[NooNoo]

Time to email symantec and trend I would think....

[rgharper]

OK.

I've had at least 20 machines come in in the past week with the exact same symptoms. All systems are running Windows 98 except one (Windows NT 4.0).
Each machine will boot to Windows. It gets to the login screen and whether you enter the password and say OK or just hit cancel, the taskbar flashes up for a split second and then goes away.

Had a lot of this lately, seems to be caused by a malicious pop-up that offers to clean spyware off your system. The cure is to restore RUNDLL32.EXE from either the Windows 98/ME CD or CAB files, which will need to be done from a bootable floppy using the EXTRACT command.

Alternatively, you can boot from a floppy disk and change the shell=Explorer.exe line in System.ini to shell=progman.exe then remove the floppy and restart the system. That will let you use the GUI to extract the correct file if the thought of using the command line gives you the willies. Be sure you put it back when you're done otherwise you'll confuse the poor PC owner.

[rgharper]

Had a lot of this lately, seems to be caused by a malicious pop-up that offers to clean spyware off your system. The cure is to restore RUNDLL32.EXE from either the Windows 98/ME CD or CAB files, which will need to be done from a bootable floppy using the EXTRACT command.

Crap, sorry. Wrong fix. That one fixes the problem with all icons in the Control Panel stating that you need administrative rights. This is the real fix, and I apologize for the confusion:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;249191