I can boot to my desktop. My icons and task bar appear. They disappear after 5 to 10 seconds. All I can see is my desktop wallpaper and my mouse cursor. The only thing I can do at that point is to open the task manager and shutdown or restart my PC. I am able to get to safe mode but it does the samething. I tried the last known good configuation. That didn't help. Has anyone had this problem? Thanks for any help. I'm running XP Media Center.

Normally this problem of disappearing of desktop icons caused by the virus called called F-Nimda which creates a file named bxomebc.exe which aborts the windows explorer from starting. But this problem could be due to the corrupted registry also.

First download the F-Nimda virus removal tool. and run it.

if the nimda removal tool doesn't work...try this if you're comfortable editing the windows registry:

WARNING!!! Editing the Windows Registry can hose a windows installation if done incorrectly!!!

After you log on to your computer and your icons/taskbar disappear do Ctr + Alt + Del to open Windows Task Manager. In Windows Task Manager click File, New Task and when prompted type regedit.exe .

Regedit will open. Go to the folder that says HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, Software, Microsoft, Windows NT, Current Version, Winlogon
click on Winlogon only once, do not expand it.

Locate Shell on the right hand side. Right click on Shell and change its value to explorer.exe if it isn't already.

i found this instead of editing the registry, does the same thing without the hassle.
open notepad and copy and paste the contents of the code box into notepad.
click File, Save. Type explorer.reg into the File name box, select Desktop from the Save in box and click save.
go to the desktop, double click explorer.reg, click Yes in the "Are you sure you want to add" box. it'll say successfully added, click ok.

Thanks for the info. I tried everything listed with no success. I guess I'll have to reinstall.

if you have time before they disappear try this.

Right click on the "Taskbar" and select "Properties"
Then the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window opens
Stay under the "Taskbar" tab then
Uncheck "Auto-Hide taskbar" option
Uncheck "Hide inactive icons" option
Click "Apply"
Click "OK"

if not try
windows task manager, File, New task, type explorer.exe and try the above.

Thank you very much. I was to quick to give up. I just completed the reinstall. I thought I would check to see if there were more responses. I will save the information just in case it happens to me again. Thanks again.