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Help: Desktop no longer functional, but randomly.

T

TheRealMrGrey

Member
I'm having a strange bug in Win 7 64 home where the desktop sometimes and randomly stops working completely. What I mean by this is that I can see the desktop (ie background image) and all the icons on it (ie shortcuts, etc), but if I try to click on any of the icons it is as if they are part of the background image. In addition, I cannot right click on the desktop to bring up a menu. I can run other programs normally from the start menu.

Again, it does not happen all the time and appears to be random. I am very worried it could be a virus or rootkit, but AVG Free claims I have no viruses. I seriously doubt AVG Free can find rootkits. Is there a free rootkit revealer for Win 7?

Can anyone help? I'll post my hijack this log, if this is useful. The problem is happening right now as I write this, so hopefully if it is some foul program running it might be in there.

Thanks.
 
I cannot post the hijack this log because the forum's html compiler thinks some of the bits in the log are meant to compile into images. Does anyone know an html command that turns off the compiler and just posts things as text?

Thanks.
 
What happens if you right click the desktop and select REFRESH?
 
If I right click on the desktop nothing happens - I get no menu. It as if the desktop is just a background that cannot be interacted with. I can see all the icons, but you cannot click on them or select them. You cannot drag selection boxes. Basically, the mouse cannot interact with the desktop at all.

Everything else seems to be normal, including the bar at the bottom of the screen where all the windows icons appear.

Thanks for responding!
 
My first guess would be that explorer.exe is corrupted. But if the taskbar (is it still called that in 7?) is working then that may not be the case. It may be the windows desktop manager (or desktop windows manager?) either way, I'd try running a system file check.

Open command prompt (type cmd in start menu search) as administrator.
Type the following command : sfc/scannow

This is have windows verify and try to repair some of the key system files. It doesn't always work very well, and doesn't tell you what its fixing, but occasionally will fix something.

You may also want to try a checkdisk if that doesn't work (/r or /b preferably).
 
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