Odd (at least to me) loss of shell/desktop/gui/whatever.
System info: Built PC, XP-Pro SP-1, P4, 1.8GHz, 1G RAM, Asus motherboard, logitech trackball. System used for office tasks, light CAD work. 2 & half years old roughly.
Problem = Win seems to start fine, nothing strange on post screens I can see as they whiz by, but after "welcome" splash, screen goes black except for mouse pointer. System works reasonably well nonetheless, so long as I use taskmanager to access "run" in order to start whatever. Screen looks fine in applications. Workstation & windows explorer are running.
Recent history is system was becoming unstable, getting bsod every few hours with varying error messages. Tried multiple malware/virus checkers, nothing significant. Looked at Registry, was a huge mess, did some cleanup on own, was too much for my limited skills so downloaded a cleanup tool recommended by friend, Registry Booster. In middle of download got bsod, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. When re-booted, got the aforementioned black screen. It's been with me since.
After considerable effort got Registry Booster downloaded and paid for, it seemed to work well. Found 1807 registry errors, appeared to fix vast majority correctly. However did not solve problem, though I will say PC boots considerably faster now, so I get to see the black screen quicker. Only other consistent pattern is always get bsod if I attempt to install AVG antivirus. An old copy of Norton I had around installed fine, but can't update so mostly did it as a test. Updated AdAware, installed Spysweeper, installed AutoRuns, etc with no prob. Even MS Office runs fine (for once). Exact same pattern of behavior in Safe Mode, btw.
Tomorrow I will try Memtest86 (it's getting quite late here), but in the meantime if anyone has any suggestions as to the loss of the shell/desktop/gui/whatever I would very much appreciate it.
