So my sister was on my mother's laptop yesterday, and was just doing NORMAL stuff, when apparently a popup came up that was some kind of virus scan thing. So my sister clicks on it, thinking it was SOMETHING of my mom's. After she did, the desktop went blank, and only the background was visible (no icons, no start, no anything). So we restarted it, and nothing was there again. Does anyone have any advice for what to do to fix it?Operating system and installed malware protection please...We have Windows XP Home edition and some kind of AT&T anti spyware programJust a recommendation...

If you have been staying on top of your malware protection...try booting into Safe Mode and RUN a full system scan...letting your malware protection delete or quarantine any infection it may find.

Once it is done...try rebooting into Windows normally...and run a full system scan again.

Post your results please.

Update: Windows XP Safe ModeI have my doubts about AT&T's anti-spyware. Download AVG Free and SUPERAntiSpyware (with another computer if you have to). Scan with them, one at a time, in Safe Mode as Saviour suggests. Let them clean whatever they want.

I suspect some sort of SmitFraud variant, so go ahead and post HijackThis LOG (scan in Normal Mode).I'm moving this to the Viruses and Spyware section.If you see nothing on the desktop... try opening task MANAGER (Alt+Ctrl+Delete)
and then try to open a file from there. That should make your icon, start menu, etc... reappear again. Not 100% sure thought.
The same thing happened when i started my comp one day.
Hope i could help Quote from: Ifain on July 03, 2007, 11:24:35 PM

If you see nothing on the desktop... try opening task manager (Alt+Ctrl+Delete)
and then try to open a file from there. That should make your icon, start menu, etc... reappear again. Not 100% sure thought.
The same thing happened when i started my comp one day.
Hope i could help