Windows 2003 Domain Controllers

SUS to distribute Windows updates

SMS 2003

XP Pro SP1

We are experiencing a large amount of users who do not get any desktop icons or taskbar. Use taskmanager to launch explorer and all is well. This has us stumped, as well as Microsoft (we have a call placed with them).

I was hoping someof the gurus here might have some thoughts.

Thanks

I'd like a bit more info on this please.

Starting explorer from the Task-Manager is a trick I use on many systems that don't show the desktop. And it happens to systems NOT in a domain environment, without SMS or SUS.

I'm not saying that SMS or SUS are not the problem. It could be a network problem. Where do you store the user profiles? Do you have folder synchronisation switched on in your domain. How large are the user profiles on the network of the users that are experiencing this problem?

Let us know...

No folder synching, all profiles are local, nothing roaming. There is nothing consistent in the app or system logs...sometimes it seems to be pointing to an app repairing itself, other times a tonne of netlogon errors appear...but again, these are not consistent across all PC's.

Using GPO's to apply policies.

Sounds like explorer.exe is crashing.

Have you checked in event viewer for any hints??