Explorer.exe no longer starts up

[Redpen 0]

Somehow, some way, the explorer.exe process no longer starts up in my XP pro. I get a blank desktop. ??? No viruses from Norton, or PCcillin, and nothing shows in pest patrol. HiJackthis doesn't show anything out of the ordinary either. The Dog-gone thing just went on vacation. I bring it up manually now using "new task" in the task manager. What's worse, I had turned my system restore off doing maintenance a few weeks back and forgot to turn it back on. Arghhh!!!

 

I tried a quick fix of linking the file to my startup, but I guess explorer.exe has to be running in the first place for the startup directory to function. What registry entries or whatever must I perform to get it back in my processes?

 

And if anyone knows how this could have happened with no viruses, etc., that would be some great info. I'm truly stumped how it happened out of the blue like that. 90% of my online time is on Engineering pages at various Universities.. I haven't had a virus in literally years, and didn't find one after this. Something had to pull it, but what???

[Redpen 0]

To Answer my own thread. There was a nasty little critter that snuck on. I took a closer look at Hijackthis, and found a entry for shell=explorer.exe, c:/------/netdc.exe . I found this to be some newdotnet slimer. Got rid of the offending files and startup doowahs, and all returned to normal...

 

Mission complete. Thanks.