Another Windows Vista Problem

[haws bah gawd 0]

I am having an interesting problem with my PC. It is running Windows Vista, and after about 5 minutes of the computer being on, the taskbar and desktop will completely vanish. Also, the only program I can actually have up and running for any amount of time is Internet Explorer. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING else, that I open will stay up for about 5 seconds then automatically close. Any suggestions?

[AntiLeaf33 0]

First it almost sounded like the explorer.exe crashing out (which happened to me more often in XP then Vista), but if it won't keep anything else open kind of puzzles me. Does it give an error message when the other apps crash, or just disappear and gone?

[haws bah gawd 0]

It just disappears and is gone. I have to go into task manager and manually tell it to restart the explorer.exe task in order to get everything up again. So, in a way it is the explorer.exe that continues to crash. The other problem, and one I haven't figured out yet is why nothing wants to stay open. I have about a 5-10 second window before anything closes.

[ZGangsta 0]

First, probably a stupid question, but have you completely power cycled the computer? I mean, are you sleeping/hibernating it rather than completely turning it off each time? If so, then try a complete shutdown.

 

Well since you can get IE working, you can do an online virus/malware scan and find out if that's a problem. Sure I've had random explorer.exe crashes throughout every Windows I've ever used, but every time? Sounds like something might be up. I HAVE heard about trojans that can cause this behavior.

 

Try booting into safe mode too.

 

Vista has a System Restore function too so that might be something to try. But you might not be able to access it since you can't seem to keep anything running.

[Thoth 0]

Does the background turn black?

 

If so, your version of Windows Vista is considered invalid. IE is the only thing that runs so that you can validate your copy of Vista.

[haws bah gawd 0]

I've tried power cycling the computer, but nothing really helps.

 

I don't get a black screen. My wallpaper remains the same.

 

I was going to try the system restore because I already have all my important stuff backed-up. Unfortunately, my computer's "last known good configuration" is about an hour after it initially began to have problems. I would prefer to just do a complete factory restore, or destructive reformat, but I haven't seen where that is an option.