A question for you computer gurus

[G0ALY]

When I’m trying to open some of my programs… They are becoming displayed in the task bar, but not on the desktop. All I can do from the taskbar is close them.

This is in Windows XP. Any ideas?

[moot]

You mean you get a square spot with their name in the task bar, but no actual window?  Try opening task manager (ctrl alt del) and in the Applications tab, right click on the program and select anything except the last two (end task / go to process) and "minimize".

[Swoop]

You've got hung process which is stopping other processes from running. 

Does it do it immediately after a reboot or does the symptom start after the PC has been on for a while?

Using the above described method, go to the processes tab of task manager, find explorer.exe and end the process.  When explorer restarts, does the original problem persist?

[OOZ662]

Using the above described method, go to the processes tab of task manager, find explorer.exe and end the process.  When explorer restarts, does the original problem persist?

Note that it won't always restart itself. In this case, your computer isn't exploding, just type "explorer" or "explorer.exe" into the Run... command found under the File menu of the Task Manager.

[G0ALY]

Okay, that didn’t work… And it is going downhill. I now have to start in safe mode and the hit restart to get anything. Then, when I try to run a few systems programs, they appear in the task bar, but not on the desktop. Most other programs will do nothing at all. System restore, and defrag will not work at all. The hard drive will not allow itself to be error checked…. Looks like a reformat is on the way.

[moot]

Yep.  If you can afford it, reformat's clean slate's almost always a guaranteed solution.

[G0ALY]

Yeap, a quick (Haha) reformat cleaned everything up. Luckily I have saved my game settings and the few other things that I would have missed.

[OOZ662]

Next time look into storing everything you want to keep on a seperate partition. Windows acting funky? Just reformat it and leave the rest alone.

If you get really frisky, look in to "slipstreamed" CDs. I can install my OS woth every setting in place, all user accounts created, and ready to use without doing anything but putring yhe disk in and waiting an hour.