Desktop Functionality Lost in Power Outage

[Nealinky]

Hello everyone, I've had Windows 7 Evaluation copy (Build 7100, x64 edition) installed for a while now and it has worked great--I really like it! However, this morning I had a quick 5 second power outage, and when I booted my PC the desktop no longer worked! All of the icons I had on desktop are gone, the only thing that is there is my background picture. I cannot left-click/drag on desktop, but I can right-click on desktop like usual (and the normal shortcuts menu appears as normal). If I try to add anything to desktop, nothing shows up though (it's there if I browse to Desktop through Windows Explorer though). It's acting almost acting as if I had closed down explorer.exe (except the bottom task tray bar is still there and it works just fine).

Anybody have any ideas on how to get my desktop working again? I can create another user account and the desktop works great on there, but I had my account customized quite a bit so I'd hate to have to set everything in a new account.

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi Nealinky, welcome to the forums.

You may need try a Repair Install and see if that helps restore your desktop.


Hope this helps



Added: Failing that a system restore might help

Jeff

 

[Nealinky]

Thanks for the help Jeff. I tried to do a system restore before I posted on here, but there weren't any available (I unfortunately did not create one since I installed Windows 7). I am dual booting Windows 7 with Windows Vista, and only created a virtual HDD of 20 GB for Windows 7. Unfortunately, the repair install option requires 11+ GB... and after installing Windows 7 I only had a few GB free, so it doesn't look like I can do a repair. I guess I'll just go with creating a new account and setting everything back up, unless there is something else that can be done. Thanks again for the reply though!

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi, sorry for the late reply.

If you run Computer Management (just type computer into the start menu) you should be able to shrink & expand the volume of the virtual disk. This will use up more space from another drive but it could be worth it.

 

[Blongs]

Hello everyone, I've had Windows 7 Evaluation copy (Build 7100, x64 edition) installed for a while now and it has worked great--I really like it! However, this morning I had a quick 5 second power outage, and when I booted my PC the desktop no longer worked! All of the icons I had on desktop are gone, the only thing that is there is my background picture. I cannot left-click/drag on desktop, but I can right-click on desktop like usual (and the normal shortcuts menu appears as normal). If I try to add anything to desktop, nothing shows up though (it's there if I browse to Desktop through Windows Explorer though). It's acting almost acting as if I had closed down explorer.exe (except the bottom task tray bar is still there and it works just fine).

Anybody have any ideas on how to get my desktop working again? I can create another user account and the desktop works great on there, but I had my account customized quite a bit so I'd hate to have to set everything in a new account.

This may be dumb but did you try right click on desktop and click "view" then click "show desktop icons"