Help me please!

[Jeni]

ok.. Im kinda desperate....

Im in some kinda freaky cyber space thing and need a dedicated computer guru!

What happened...

Went to jump on the puter.. checked email, opened ie... but it didn't open - nothing opened.. like the whole deskstop was frozen - it would think for a sec but then nothing!

So i log off and back on again.. but the destop doenst come back.. just the pretty pic in teh background. i've tried restarting and everything I can think of but I can only get to the pretty picture with no destop..

I only managed to get here coz I can get task manager up and I used the 'new task' to open mozilla and run a virus scan (only trackign cookies and the like so far).

I can see the processes and start all my programs from task manager but have no idea what is wrong with the puter... One thing of note is that in processes, there is a 'system Idle Process' that is using lots of cpu... is that normal?

Help me please.. i havne't backed up my photos! sob sob

[Ali]

Ack, Jeni - Mine did something similar recently. If it's any consolation, I didn't lose the hard drive - Windows was corrupt and had to be re-installed, which meant all prgrams had to be reinstalled and I needed someone else to do that (and to put my emails back into my email program) but the stuff on my hard drive stayed put.
Ali

[CorNic]

Oh no Jeni!!! How scarey, I'm no help, but I hope someone can give you the answer soon, Good luck.

[Lis]

Jeni, can't help much... except that don't worry about the system idle process... that's basically the "left overs" from all the other programs,.... so if you were running no programs at all it would be close to 100%. if that makes sense lol
So it's probably a good thing that it is rather high, because that means there isn't another program hogging the CPU

you could have a virus though.
when did you last update your virus scanner etc?

so it happened after you used your email? you might have downloaded a virus in your email, or something?

[Jeni]

Just tryign to find my way into the control panal..

I have avg, ad-aware, and a squared all running atm to weed anythign out. so far have found a couple of mrus? tracking cookies and one dialer (grr)

[sarah_jane]

could you have clicked "hide desktop" ??

right click the pretty picture screen, and see if the hide desktop items is ticked.

[Jeni]

Good idea.. but no.. nothign happens when I right click...(or left click either lol)

Its like it just didn't finish loading .....

Start button doesn't work either...

[Jamie]

DH says restart the computer in safe mode (by clicking F8 when restarting, and select safe mode) and see if your desktop appears then. He will look into it and find out more.
Fear not, all your files should be safe. Just make sure if you take it to a computer shop, that they back up for you!! It might even be worth trying to do it yourselv using taskman!!!

[Jeni]

ok... gonna restart again and try safe mode....

[Jeni]

arghh.. cant find safe mode (does xp have safe mode?)

Have found possible solution but requires editing the registry.. how do I do that! argghhgh