Windows Explorer won't run and desktop is blank

1. rename your explorer.exe to explorer1.exe
2. change the value "Explorer.exe" in regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon to "Explorer1.exe"
3. run "Explorer1.exe"

I had common problem today. After an automatic update a client's computer wont load Windows Explorer and does not show icons and taskbar. Only the desktop walpaper and the mouse is shown. Task manager can be started with Ctrl-Alt-Del and I tried to start explorer.exe. A box came up saying "Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item." To start Add/Remove Programs I used HijackThis. There is a button wich opens the Add/Remove thing. But none of the installed updates could be removed. There was no Uninstall button. Then I found a program called Trojan Remover on the internet, installed and started on that PC using Task Manager. The program said that there is a problem with some registry entry and missing files:

Removing the following registry keys:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\Notify\igfxcui - already removed (or did not exist)
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\explorer.exe - already removed (or did not exist)


5:48:07 PM: Scanning ----- IMAGEFILE DEBUGGERS -----
Key = explorer.exe
Debugger file = C:\Program Files\Microsoft Common\svchost.exe - this entry has been removed [file not found to scan]

After restart windows started correctly with all icons and taksbar and so on.

I hope that helped someone

YOU ROCK!!!
Out of all the information on the web about this issue, YOURS was the only one that worked!!!
One thing though, i couldn't rename explorer.exe to explorer1.exe so i grabbed an unaltered copy of explorer.exe from my laptop and renamed it while it was on the flash drive, then copied it to c:\windows.
AND IT WORKED!!!!

I LOVE YOU MAN!!!!

Great to see old advice is still helpful advice. Thanks for taking the time to let us know it worked for you.