Vocal Voices

A quick call out to WM in the hope you will be able to help...

I have somehow managed to break my laptop, I am currently using my tablet but I don't much care for it to type. anyway the laptop on starting has lost all the icons and start menu bar etc and no amount of clicking will restore them, I have tried control, salt and delete to no avail, can you help?

Sounds like it needs mending with a new one!!!!!

Hi Gal,

The start menu, task bar and icons are provided by Windows explorer. First of all try pressing the windows key plus the R key winkey+r together. You should get the run dialog box.

If you type explorer and press enter what happens?

If the winkey+r does not work, you can press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select task manager. When task manager comes up, you can select File from the menu at the top and Run (Run a new task in W8.1). You should see the same run dialog box.

You can get to system restore by

winkey+r
type rstrui.exe in the dialog box and press enter
Follow the prompts

It sounds like something has caused windows explorer not to launch correctly.

Aw thanks Suff ( and Rodo! ) but Madame Panic strikes again

On Friday I found a CD rom with photos on, so I popped it into my machine to find out what pics they were. It was after this that things started going weird - first off the internet bar (that shows you're online) was greyed out so I couldn't go online and then last night when I tried again, as I say the screen was just displaying my screen saver pic with no icons or any other 'thing' on screen - just the pic.

I set the laptop about a month ago to 'hibernate' when I close the lid, rather than complete shut down. This morning I switched the achine off with the button, tried again an hour later, and HEY PRESTO - everything back to normal

Yes I assumed you had tried rebooting. That's what assumption does for you. Losing windows explorer is not that uncommon.

If you do as I said and try to run explorer again, then you would probably have got the menu's and toolbar back and then could have rebooted more easily.