Often when I am doing something on my computer, everything except my desktop background will disappear.
Is that Windows Explorer quitting?
I am using Norton Anti-Virus and I often scan using AVG and Spybot
Any ideas?
Do you get any crash errors coming up? Usually if everything disappears like that, YES - it’s explorer quitting. Does it come back? If so, at least explorer is rebooting itself. No idea what could be causing it though~
Lo Bo To, assuming you don’t have a virus or spyware, it sounds to me like your computer is, well, fucking up. Either it’s being overworked, or Windows has some errors. Alternatively, it could be a certain software package messing things up. See if you can pinpoint what always seems to be running when this happens.
Anyway, to get your explorer back, just hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, and choose “Task Manager”, then under the Applications tab, click on New Task and type explorer.exe
You might want to keep an eye on the Task Manager from time to time anyway, to see if any applications are hogging the CPU (look under the processes tab). It’s OK for System Idle Process to be in the 90s. In fact, it’s bad if it’s not.
If that doesn’t work (explore still doesn’t load again) you can try booting into safe mode and working there for a bit…If you still loose the icons then you have bigger problems. If not you might want to try this fix from microsquishy. Granted it is for older versions of windows but it might help. That is if you not squeamish about mucking with your registry settings.
Failing all of that. I would go to your boot drives web site (Western digital, Seagate, yadda yadda) and download their hard drive tools. Run some tests on the drive, the background going AWOL could be foreshadowing of an impending meltdown. I have also seen and heard of power supplies doing freaking things like this but check all the other possibilities first.
Back up NOW!
The End is Nigh!