Desktop is empty when loading Win XP home!

[ztx]

Alright, so today, I boot up my pc, and I notice during the "welcome"" screen, its quite sluggish than normal, and then after a few minutes, all I see is my desktop and no start bar or anything. I can load up task manager, but my desktop only has my background, any idea what's causing this? Checked my processes, and my normal bg processes aren't loaded, like antivirus, firewall, and such.

I booted into safe mode, works fine, I see all my files are alright, ran NOD32, no viruses have been detected, along with Ewido/Ad Aware for malware.

My system specs are:

Windows XP Home Edition SP2

Abit AV8 Via K8T800
Seagate Barracuda 120Gb (Sata, boot drive)
Maxtor Maxline III 300gb (Sata, storage)
1 Gb (512mb x2) Ram
AMD Athlon 3500+ New Castle
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2
XFX Geforce 7800GS Extreme Edition

550W Enermax PSU
Lite-ON DVD Drrive
Lite-ON DVD Burner

If you need any other information, please let me know.

Not sure what to do here, I'm greatful for any help!

Thanks.

Edit: After awhile the desktop laods, with the icons, start menu and such, but why the slow down?

Edit2: I can't seem to connect to the internet on my pc either, even after waiting for it to load, when clicking on "My network places," a quick windows installer shows up and then dissappears!

Before all this, I do recall when trying to use winamp's shoutcast there being a issue with a socket? Shortly after, I lost my internet connection..

Maybe I should try a system restore?

Edit3: Alright, after restarting again, still just my wallpaper, was able to load task manager after like 2 minutes, had a BSOD, something about bad_pool_header.

[pam123]

I found this over at the winamp forum, see if any of it can help you : http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=201287

[ztx]

Thanks pam, looks like there could be a issue with my drivers..hmm.

Looks like a system restore fixed everything, everything was reverted back to normal, I could boot normally, gonna try a restart, see if it loads OK, I can connect to the internet again too.

Gonna' back up all my stuff, incase this thing happens again.. >.<

Any idea of the cause, for the slow loading, and empty desktop? I suppose the bsod with bad_pool_header could be directed toward faulty drivers, from the winamp fourm.

[ztx]

Wow friend told me a quick fix, so if any of you face this problem, simpley open up task manager (ctrl + alt + del), then File > New Task (Run...) > explorer.exe, and everything should load normally.



whoops, shoulda edited, oh well..