Help - In a continuous desktop refresh loop.

[waltinvt]

Family room computer, Win XP Pro.

I've tried everything (well within the context of my extremely limited PC knowledge) but I can't get this to stop - even after rebooting.

During boot up the wall paper loads and then icons along with start menu & taskbar appear as normal and the right side of the taskbar starts to show programs loading like audio manager, local area connection, Nortons, etc.

Then the screen goes to only wallpaper visible and it starts all over again.

What's weird is if I'm quick, I can get a program to run if I can manage to get it started within that short time everything's on the screen.

It all started when I used RegCure's "manage startup" option to disable some aggravating startups my wife wanted removed.

 

[Pepper]

Sounds like windows explorer is crashing and restarting. If you can launch regedit, go to these locations and see if there is anything suspicious that might cause explorer to crash.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
There are others, those two are the most likely.

If you can logon as a different user and the problem goes away, the user profile is corrupt.

Another thing you can do is use System Restore to go back to a point before this started happening.

 

[waltinvt]

Thanks Pepper, I'll give that a try.

 

[snathanb]

Sounds like windows explorer is crashing and restarting. If you can launch regedit, go to these locations and see if there is anything suspicious that might cause explorer to crash.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
There are others, those two are the most likely.

If you can logon as a different user and the problem goes away, the user profile is corrupt.

Another thing you can do is use System Restore to go back to a point before this started happening.

Good advice, might be easier if you boot into safe mode.

 

[waltinvt]

Just to update.

Actually that computer was an EMachine that had the OEM version of XP home Edition, so I ended up booting to my XP Pro install disk and installing that over the top. That solved the Explorer crash loop cycle but some other programs had to be reinstalled. I used the opportunity to clean up the HDD and get rid a lot of old programs and games no one used any longer. So far the only complaint I've heard is "what happened to the RexSox wall paper?".