explorer.exe not loading

[biffbacon]

so.... it seems like everything that could possibly go wrong with my computers has lately. fortunately, i just got my laptop back with a fresh motherboard...

now onto the next problem....

ok, so this is on a desktop. its been running normally, and isnt used that often, except occasionally my girlfriend plays WoW on it when im playing WoW on the laptop. today, it was on and sitting idle, it went into sleep more, and when i hit the mouse to bring it out of sleep, the desktop background came back up, but no taskbar, no icons, just a desktop background. i am able to open the taskmanager with ctrl alt delete.... there are processes running, but explorer never loads, so all i have is a background.

i rebooted
i logged off the admin account and back on (the only account)
i booted in safe mode
i tried a system restore from the taskmanager (in regular and safe mode)
i tried booting explorer.exe from the task manager (nothing)
i tried booting iexplorer.exe from the task manager (nothing)
i loaded msconfig.exe, it loaded, i disabled all other startup items. reboot. nothing
i checked the registry. nothing odd

im in the process of sfc /scannow (which worked in a similar situation according to something i found on google). hoping this works, but anyone else have an experience like this, or have any ideas?

 

[biffbacon]

update, so i tried the scan, it seemed to repair something as it asked for my xp disk, but still nothing on reboot.

now on to a boot from the windows xp disk to try and repair from that...

anyone have any other ideas? im running out

 

[NikolaeVarius]

chkdsk?

 

[biffbacon]

hmm, ill try chkdsk next, didnt think of that, went ahead and loadded norton before i went for the full repair, and in the process of a system scan

 

[biffbacon]

still nothing. tried a windows repair from my xp disk, but its not recognizing a bunch of files from the cd, im trying to push on ahead anyways. anyone have any other thoughts?

 

[mechBgon]

Make a Memtest86 bootable floppy or bootable CD, boot from it and run memory diagnostics. If that doesn't find errors, download the diagnostic utility for your hard drive (scroll to bottom of this page for links) and make a bootable diagnostic CD or floppy, and run diagnostics.

Also, are you saying you had no antivirus up 'til the time of this problem? If so, check this out, very good free antivirus for home use.