So my Windows XP Home is working fine for several months now. Until today. I log on and everything is fine. Then after about 1 minute, all my desktop icons disappear along with the taskbar. Everything except my desktop background. WTF? Any ideas?
What is "happening" is that Explorer is crashing. Behavior is very analogous to OS X (if finder crashes, the desktop icons and dock disappear, and then they reappear when Finder restarts automatically).
Is explorer restarting -- that is, do the icons and taskbar come back? If not, why it is unable to automatically restart is one of the questions, and of course the other is what is making Explorer crash in the first place.
Did you install any background utilities or anything that lives in the system tray recently?
Hope you get some positive thoughts here... but you are likely to endure a LOT of Windows banter and ridicule around it
Did you restart?
Woof, Woof - Dawg
Thanks to all who replied with suggestions.