Help, I need help strange things are afoot in my pc!!

[Maveric169]

ok, this is really wierd. I had no problems with my system untill about 30mins ago. I was going to redo my active desktop for the dec screenshot thread as I haven't done so in a while. Sounds harmless enough right? Well not so. I decided to redo my entire active desktop script and code and start from scratch, so I did just that. Removed all the code and saved the changes to start with a clean slate t owork from.

Next I wanted to look through my files of wallpapers to choose a new one. so I click on "my computer" icon to access one of my partitions that I have that stored on. And guess what? My drives are no longer listed. No drive Icons, nothing but 2 folders, Shared Documents, and My Documents". That is it! Now I can type in c: to get to my C: partition and D: for that one, but I no longer have any icon's in my computer for these. Now this happen right after I saved the changes to my active desktop. Nothing else was done.

So I run virus scan, (nothing), ad-aware 6, (nothing), Hi-jack this, (nothing unusal). So I say ok, I will jsut perform a restore. None of my restore points work. It will go through the motions but after the reboot it says the restore failed. I have tried ALL the restore points available and I get the same thing.

Now when I do a restore point (usually 2x a month) I also make a backup of my registry. So I import the registry backup, and still the problem exists.

I don't know what to do. Anyone have this happen to them? Any ideas on how I can fix this? The only thing I don't have a backup of is my active desktop file

Attached is a screen shot of "my comp"

 

[j79zlr]

lol, thats freaky

Do you have TweakUI? There is an easy way to hide/unhide drives from MyComputer with that. The other way is via regedit, check these 2 locations in the registry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer

look for a DWORD NoDrives, if you find it, delete it.

 

[sboulema]

maybe rebuild your icon chache?

 

[Dublex]

Sounds to me like some of the core system files have gone belly up personally. Have you tried forcing the system file checker to see if anything has been removed accidently by using

sfc /scannow

at the Run box prompt.

Either that or for some reason your Active Desktop took out DLL or other links when you cleaned it, although why it should I do that I do not know.

If that fails, you may need to think about repairing windows from the install CD.

 

[Maveric169]

I love you guys, and yes, you can have my Bud Lite!

You were both right! In the Registry there was an entry in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

DWord NoDrives, I deleted that and sure as **** there were my drives again (after restart of course)

There is also another one at the same place that says

NoDriveTypeAutoRun, should I delete that one also?

I also took Dublex's advice and ran the system file checker and it also found missing dll files. So I got that repaired too.

I still have no idea why modifying my active desktop would do this, (I did have shortcut links to my drives on my active desktop) but why it would make registry changes of this magnitude is wierd. I am glad you folks were here to help! Thank you!!!

 

[Maveric169]

I love you guys, and yes, you can have my Bud Lite!