Missing Desktop after Windows Update

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

I'm wondering if this sounds familiar to anyone. I have seen this twice on customer computers, Windows 7 SP1 laptops, but both times I was too busy to take a photo, I'll have to remember next time.

After running through all available "priority" Windows Updates and possibly a couple "optional", and then rebooting as suggested, and the obligatory "configuring updates" completes and the computer reboots again and finishes at the desktop. All is good at this point and everything works fine. On the next reboot you wind up with a partial desktop, black, no wallpaper and a dialog that says something like "desktop not available ..." or similar. Both times I rebooted again and it was fine. I know that is really vague information but I am hoping it rings some bells.

I am certain it was from one of the Windows updates.

Google hits for those symptoms seem bunched around 2010 and 2011. The more recent ones are not related from what I can tell.

If I see it again I will post pictures here.

[Tripredacus]

I'm not sure if it is the same, but I used to have a customer who had this problem. It was a custom install, but it was caused by Explorer.exe process being killed during start up, resulting in that message. A reboot surely fixed it, or manually running explorer.exe from Task Manager if it is available.