Problem with XP on startup

[Johnnie27]

My girlfriend recently started having a problem with her computer. Whenever she starts it, XP loads, almost entirely, but the desktop icons never appear. Then, whenever she tries to do anything, the computer freezes, and she has to use the power button to reboot.

I've already had her start in safe mode, and check for viruses, and also use msconfig to turn off everything non-essential that runs on startup, but nothing has worked. I talked to my dad about it, and he said that the same thing happened to someone he knew, and that it turned out to be a "corrupted startup file", as he put it, but couldn't remember any more details. Does anyone know anything about this?

[bailey]

do you know if anything was done or installed or whatever when the problem started.

the system was activated properly too, right ?

two ways to fix the problem

1. repaire install

2. restore to a date when it was running fine.