Can't get into windows

Working on a friends computer who has Windows ME as the
OS.

Problem is that when you start up the computer it boots
up to the point where it displays the desktop wallpaper
but that's it. You see no icons,no taskbar, you can't do
ctrl-alt-del for the task manager, you can't do anything.
The only thing that works is if you hit the power button
on the computer it shows the "windows is shutting down"
box and it does shutdown. Can't start in Safe Mode as it
does the same thing. Classic symptoms of a virus but
there is no way you can run a Virus checker. He has no
rescue disks and no emergency startup disks. Also his
drive is NTFS which makes using any kind of DOS utility
hopless. All I can do is run a utility from
www.bootdisk.com that allows me to see the contents of
the drive.

any suggestions or workarounds ? short of formatting ?

thanks.

If his drive is NTFS, then he can't be running Win ME - which can't see
NTFS, or run in NTFS.
Once you find out which OS he has - or which file system - then come back
with what's *really* happening!

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2004, Win9x)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/millsrpch.htm
http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's

wrote in message
...
Working on a friends computer who has Windows ME as the
OS.

Problem is that when you start up the computer it boots
up to the point where it displays the desktop wallpaper
but that's it. You see no icons,no taskbar, you can't do
ctrl-alt-del for the task manager, you can't do anything.
The only thing that works is if you hit the power button
on the computer it shows the "windows is shutting down"
box and it does shutdown. Can't start in Safe Mode as it
does the same thing. Classic symptoms of a virus but
there is no way you can run a Virus checker. He has no
rescue disks and no emergency startup disks. Also his
drive is NTFS which makes using any kind of DOS utility
hopless. All I can do is run a utility from
www.bootdisk.com that allows me to see the contents of
the drive.

any suggestions or workarounds ? short of formatting ?

thanks.