Shortcuts and start menu went POOF.

Righto, so, for the fir... Actually the secondth time in my entire existence I've been unable to solve my own problems via the use of google, this of course is quite the devastating blow and my pride is still bleeding, but I accept that even google isn't perfect. My personal disaster aside, I need your help.

The problem occurred yesterday, in the following manner.

I did a critical update via Windows 7s own update manager and of course I paid no attention to the contents. My computer turns on, on it's own, at 7:20 as always, and I log in, realizing now that all my icons are invisible, and my start menu is unavailable. This bugs me, so I figured it might be the explorer.exe process even though I don't see how that can be as the icons in essence are still there, or their text is, and the start bar is also there, it's just not very functional without the start menu. Regardless, I shut down the explorer.exe process and reboot it via the use of task manager. No effect. I pull out some hair that I wasn't using anyways and sigh deeply, muttering to my self as I do a system restore that sets me back 2 days. As you may have guessed, this left me almost bald, or in other words, it did nothing.

At this point I start googling like my life depended on it. See my computer is a year old, and it came with windows Vista, of which I was no big fan, and I bought my windows 7 via microsoft and simply upgraded it, and reformatting would force me to reacquire EVERYTHING, which I'm sure is a problem most of you are not unfamiliar with, but regardless it would take me days, literally, to get my computer back together, especially so, since all my games are bought and downloaded via steam, which means I would have to re-download them one at a time. Which could take days depending on my luck.

I can add that using google I found that people who had the same symptoms as I, where mostly people who had in some way managed to shut down their explorer.exe process and only needed to restart it, I've been through at least 40 threads that all end up in people cheering for whoever told them to open task manager, and run the explorer.exe process which unfortunately means that the one or two people who had the same problem as my self are drowned out.

But! I have faith in you people, so help me out here, pretty please. I could add all kinds of info here but really, if it's needed just ask for it, I'll be paying a close eye to this thread as this problem is severely limiting my ability to do both my school and non-school related work.

P.S I just noticed I can't right click on the desktop either, don't know how I missed that.

System specs are filled as best as I can manage, though do to said computer being a type of PC replacer or simply a laptop, there are some things that are a little hard to determine.

I'm taking a look at your link now.

Thanks for taking the time.

Well, the SFC scan did not find anything which somehow does not surprise me.

Regarding the restore point rich, I have done exactly that, back and forth and undone the first and so on and so on, as you may have guessed, it did not work but I am not yet at a place where I find my self without alternatives. Until I have absolute confirmation that there is no solution, I will avoid the dreaded reformat... Partially because I am lazy.

Hi, this might be what you need, check this out.

1Bowtie: I've thought of that my self, but since I upgraded from Vista by downloading the upgrade thingy from Microsoft I am sad to say that I am without a functional CD, though I do have DVD writeables within range and I believe that I should be able to download a full copy via Microsoft and then burn it, and THEN finally do a repair, but considering the size of the download it is something I will have to do overnight.

jfar: Solid call on the Icon cache there, was fairly certain it was going to help, but no such luck, but again, good call.

Buiscki said:

Righto, so, for the fir... Actually the secondth time in my entire existence I've been unable to solve my own problems via the use of google, this of course is quite the devastating blow and my pride is still bleeding, but I accept that even google isn't perfect. My personal disaster aside, I need your help.

The problem occurred yesterday, in the following manner.

I did a critical update via Windows 7s own update manager and of course I paid no attention to the contents. My computer turns on, on it's own, at 7:20 as always, and I log in, realizing now that all my icons are invisible, and my start menu is unavailable. This bugs me, so I figured it might be the explorer.exe process even though I don't see how that can be as the icons in essence are still there, or their text is, and the start bar is also there, it's just not very functional without the start menu. Regardless, I shut down the explorer.exe process and reboot it via the use of task manager. No effect. I pull out some hair that I wasn't using anyways and sigh deeply, muttering to my self as I do a system restore that sets me back 2 days. As you may have guessed, this left me almost bald, or in other words, it did nothing.

At this point I start googling like my life depended on it. See my computer is a year old, and it came with windows Vista, of which I was no big fan, and I bought my windows 7 via microsoft and simply upgraded it, and reformatting would force me to reacquire EVERYTHING, which I'm sure is a problem most of you are not unfamiliar with, but regardless it would take me days, literally, to get my computer back together, especially so, since all my games are bought and downloaded via steam, which means I would have to re-download them one at a time. Which could take days depending on my luck.

I can add that using google I found that people who had the same symptoms as I, where mostly people who had in some way managed to shut down their explorer.exe process and only needed to restart it, I've been through at least 40 threads that all end up in people cheering for whoever told them to open task manager, and run the explorer.exe process which unfortunately means that the one or two people who had the same problem as my self are drowned out.

But! I have faith in you people, so help me out here, pretty please. I could add all kinds of info here but really, if it's needed just ask for it, I'll be paying a close eye to this thread as this problem is severely limiting my ability to do both my school and non-school related work.

P.S I just noticed I can't right click on the desktop either, don't know how I missed that.

Have you tried starting in Safe Mode? Try booting in safe mode and see if the behavior is repeated.