XP Home problems...please help!

[Tullphan]

A friend brought me his desktop over for me to look at...told me it stays stuck on the "Welcome" screen. It's an older HP Pavilion running XP Home.
I got it to go past the "Welcome" screen, but when it got to the desktop, no icons or taskbar. I tried "Ctrl + Esc", but that didn't help. I tried "Ctrl + Alt + Del", but that didn't help either.
I tried System Recovery, but it blue screened.
I booted into Safe Mode & again, no icons or taskbar. I again tried the above combination of buttons to no avail.
He's mainly wanting to get his pictures off & doesn't care about anything else.
Any way I can do this since I can't get to a taskbar?
I have access to flash drives if needed.

Thanks.

 

[Dahak]

>>> I tried "Ctrl + Esc", but that didn't help. I tried "Ctrl + Alt + Del", but that didn't help either. <<<
in what way? did it bring up the start menu or task mananger?

if you right click the desktop do you get the usual menu? if so go to Arrange Icons -> Show Desktop Icons
for the task bar, it could be that it was manually shrunk down, move your mouse to the lower edge of the screen and see if you get the double headed arrow.

if none of that works, hit windows key + e will bring up the windows explorer

 

[Tullphan]

Originally posted by: Dahak
>>> I tried "Ctrl + Esc", but that didn't help. I tried "Ctrl + Alt + Del", but that didn't help either. <<<
in what way? did it bring up the start menu or task mananger?

It didn't bring up anything. A brief flash of the hourglass alongside where the cursor was parked.

if you right click the desktop do you get the usual menu? if so go to Arrange Icons -> Show Desktop Icons
for the task bar, it could be that it was manually shrunk down, move your mouse to the lower edge of the screen and see if you get the double headed arrow.

Nothing happened when I right-clicked.

if none of that works, hit windows key + e will bring up the windows explorer

Wanna bet?
Again...nothing happened.

 

[Dahak]

hmm... crap
can you boot into safe mode with command prompt? and if so type explorer and hit enter and see if it can bring up windows explorer.
if not you might be able to plug in the flash drive and copy the files off the drive onto the flash drive to at least back those up. sound like a virus or something has infected it

 

[Tullphan]

I'll try to get into the command prompt. I'm thinking I chose that option once, but it took me into safe mode anyhow.