Start Menu and Icons Wont Show Up Cant Do Anything

Ok so I was up late working on the computer and then went to bed left it on and woke up to a stright black screen and the mouse cursor. I shut the power off and turned it back on and Logged in and only my background and mouse curser would show up.

Can't right click, can't boot into safe mode, tryed to boot useing last known good settings, tried to log in as different user. When I log in I can still access the public files from a different computer and I can ping the computer. I can log in with remote desktop connection, but still no start menu or icons or anything.

Yesterday AVG did find a virus and I was able to heal the infection. I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition. Right now I am goign to try and boot into Slax OS so I can see if any files were modifyed in the windows folder and system/system32, Dunno if this will tell me anything but its a start.

I will be checking this thread multipul times today so if you need more information I will respond promptly.

Thanks,

Steve

I am not able to get into the recovery console. When prompted for the administrator password i leave it blank and hit enter and it is wrong.. i put in my password and it says its wrong... I have no clue on that one.... I was able to run the windows check disk from booting up into the windows debugger, I installed a new harddrive and installed windows xp on it just to be able to access and backup my files. I cant find any DLLs that have been modifyed yesterday, the only files that were modifyed in the windows folder yesterday were some log files and some .net framework files... doesent look anything important that would cause this.


Any other ideas?

as in the recovery partition? No i know I can fix it easy just with a reformat and install, but I am trying to fix this installation so I dont lose my outlook emails and installed programs ect ect...

is you were talkign about something eles please let me know.

Nilzar, so you can't get into safe mode or even get into the recovery consol?
Sounds like a bug I had once.

Well, here are a few things that you can try.

When you log in, hit CTRL+ALT+ESC that will bring up the task manger, assuming the bug didn't eat that. If it comes up try killing some odd processes. Anything with special charaters in it or anything just odd. (e.g. ^@&^1587, win972, huytahsg).
One other thing you can try is, if you have a second PC try installing it as a secondary hard drive but BE VERY CAREFUL. You could potentialy let the bug jump from that drive to the uninfected drive. You could try running a scan that way.

When you get itno the recovery console, try admin, or Administrator as a password if you have not already. Make sure you use the user name Administrator. Let me know how this progresses. I will try to come up with something else if this dose not work.

Ctrl alt esc diddnt work, And I tried every administrator password I can think of for the recovery console. I just went ahead and reinstalled windows. I searched fourms and the microsoft website with no luck and could not be without the desktop as this is how most of my work is done. Thank you all for your replys.