Interesting. Normally, if you end the explorer.exe process, it restarts
itself. I didn't think about the fact that a user Shell entry somewhere in
the registry might have a hairball (duh). Or maybe Explorer was trying to
take a nap, and not quite ready for prime time. I'm glad things are
working.

You may want to do this, to see if Explorer is feeling okay:

Right click on Command Prompt, and choose Run as Administrator. Copy the
following, and Paste it after the prompt.

sfc /SCANFILE=c:\windows\explorer.exe

Press Enter. If everything's okay, you'll get a positive, but cryptic, HAL
9000-like message from Windows Resource Protection. If you want to check
all your system files, and some pertinent registry keys, Copy and Paste
this:

sfc /SCANNOW

Press Enter. It may take a few minutes...

"Rando" <Rando@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4BE0D47E-6036-404A-A516-902B0CAC6B77@microsoft.com...
> Dean,
>
> YOU DA MAN!!!!! I was able to bring up the Task Manager as you suggested.
> Explorer was running and I closed it per your instructions. Still no
> icons
> before or after a restart. I then restarted Explorer and the icons are
> now
> back.
>
> THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!
>
> Rando
>
> "dean-dean" wrote:
>
>> Well, if you Ctrl+Alt+Del, can you contact Task Manager? On the
>> processes
>> tab, is explorer.exe running? If it is running, right-click on it, and
>> choose End Process. If it's not running, go to the Applications tab,
>> choose
>> File from the menu, and click on New Task. Type explorer.exe in the Run
>> box, and press Enter.
>>
>> "Rando" <Rando@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:7885F039-9BD2-42AF-928F-788E1A0CFF1D@microsoft.com...
>> > Just the sidebar is visible and working. No icons, no menu, just a
>> > blank
>> > screen. Nothing, zip, nada.
>> >
>> > "Julian" wrote:
>> >
>> >> "Rando" <Rando@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> >> news:CB4DAAB8-E9B4-4E38-97BD-CCA1B611B968@microsoft.com...
>> >> > Help!!! All of my desktop icons are gone form Vista. Only the
>> >> > sidebar
>> >> > is
>> >> > visible. Right-clicking in the desktop has no result.
>> >>
>> >> Absolutely nothing?
>> >> No menu at all?
>> >>
>>
>>