Missing desktop icons / taskbar after clone to new hard drive

[jmb4370]

Win XP_SP2 was cloned to new larger drive using MaxBlast4 utility. All files and folders are present on the new drive, and on startup, WinXP starts correctly to point of having same background as old drive, but then no desktop icons, taskbar, or tray appear. Bringing up Windows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) shows no applications running, but seems like all the processes are running, and the same user is logged in.

Where did everything go? I have done the clone several times using different sized drives to copy the data to, and it still happens that nothing shows but the background screen. I've done the cloning many times before, and never seen this occur, and even Maxtor support had no clue how to get things back.

I tried booting from the WinXP CD with the new drive in place, and doing a Repair install, which went through without a hitch, but still nothing but the background appeared on the screen.

Trying to boot into Safe Mode doesn't help either, as no icons show up there either.

I am really trying to avoid a clean install and reinstalling all the many applications.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Michael

Edited April 28, 2006 by jmb4370

[LLXX]

Is Explorer.exe even running? You could try starting it from the Task Manager...