I use ShadowDesktop (SD) because I can restore my hard drive if it crashes or gets infected.
And I recommend it to my clients.

 So, today, I was very surprised when my (XP-Pro) client called and said:
    "We had a power outage the other day.  When I restarted my computer, it came up with NO icons and NO Start Menu."

Well, the response is (I think):  Boot the Recovery CD and choose Restore.
Then choose a recent image and restore.

We did that TWICE and both times, it did NOT solve the problem.
The second time we did it, we checked all the checkboxes (MBR, signature, etc.)

This is very troubling - don't know what to do.  I'm having him do a Windows Repair now but I am STYMIED.

Any thoughts, ideas?

Thanks

 By not solving the problem, do you mean that it had the same problem or a different one? Have you tried restoring a prior image? It is possible to backup computer problems and restore those same problems, sometimes you need to restore an earlier image to get a restore that does not contain the problem.

The problem appeared today, Friday. An image was taken each day begere. we restored from the Thursday image and the icons were still gone. So we restored from the Ednesday image and the icons were again still gone! That's why I call this "strange." We backup up a system WITH icons but the restore of that image failed to return the icons. ??????

 I can assure you, we backup and restore everything. After performing a restore, if it isn't there, it wasn't there when it was backed up.

Not having a start menu means that explorer.exe  is not running. As for the desktop Icons, I can't explain that, but you mention in your original post that they were not there before you ever performed a restore. So it is likely that whatever caused them not to be there prior to restore, is also what is making them not there after restore.

I am a reseller.  And this is a client I have resold to.  I am not at the machine.
I wanted to remote-in over VNC but his IP is showing as a 192.168 address, so I can't.  He doesn't have a router - only a Verizon box.  If I could remote-in, that might help.
Other facts:  We did a Windows Repair - no help.
We tried Safe Mode - with and without networking - Safe Mode sort of hangs - we don't get an icon with a Start button and icons.
When booting into Safe Mode, one is asked if they want to try a System Restore: We said "Yes" one time and it said "we can't do one.  Reboot and retry."

I will say this:  The user is a bit confused about exactly when and where backups are occurring.  He has 2 external drives: F and G.  He wants to alternate them.  When we looked at the available images for restoring, he was surprised at both the times and dates that he saw.  Not exactly what he expected.

Still, we are doing a restore now from a -1-24 image - that almost a week old.  It HAS to work.

Any particular checkboxes need to be used / skipping (MBR, signature, etc.) when restoring.

BTW: I believe you that you "Back up and restore everything"!  I recommend this product.  A week ago, if someone would have asked me if this was possible, I would have answered "absolutely not.  Impossible!"  The ONLY thing I can think of is that he is somehow restoring the wrong image or restoring wrongly.

As far as your statement of "Whatever made the Start button and icons be gone before the Restore is still making them be gone after the restore" is maybe true - but that, in my mind, could only be some flaky hardware bug. I even considered having him do a Hardware Independent Restore.

Any advice on getting the VNC thing to work?
Thanks

I dont think this is mentioned in this thread, apologies if it is.

Does this user reboot their computer often? Or could it have been running for a few weeks, hiding the problem away (and backing it up), a problem that would only present itself upon reboot (or in this case a power outage and cold boot)? Do you see what I mean?

Of course totally irrelevant if the user shutsdown every night.

My other thought is that a good restore is restoring to a bad hard disk, so the result is the same each time (which I think you are considering, but of course you are off-site so thats your major problem)

Even with 1-24 image: no icons, no Start button.

All that works is the mouse:  And all he can do with the mouse is start Task Manager.  He starts TM and nothing happens.  However, he can hit Browse and his Documents, etc. are there.

 

Can you open Task Manager, then File, Run and type Explorer.exe? This should atleast get you a start menu and windows explorer running.

 as fguk mentioned. It is possible that the power outage also damaged some of the hardware as well. With most of my experiences with power outages the hardware is more likely to be damaged then something in the OS. If I had the same thing happen to me as you describe, I would immediately examine the hardware for a problem as opposed to a software solution.

 That said, have you ran a CHKDSK on the volume?

Can he start explorer.exe from Task Manager?

New Task -> "explorer" OK

If this doesn't produce anything then it's most likely a problem with winlogon.exe not allowing you to log on for whatever reason, possibly a security stop, or other countermeasure. I have seen this behavior a few times when the disk signature changed and Windows wanted to be reactivated but didn't say so, it simply left me with a blank screen. Can this user boot into safe mode, or is it the same behavior?

 I should point out also, that it had been weeks or even a month since he had rebooted prior to the Start button and icons disappearing.  So it may be the case that the "icons will disappear at reboot" "trigger" was already in the system, waiting for a reboot.

The first hardware debugging step I always perform is to blow the dust out of the machine. Dust can contain conductive carpet fibers and other things that cause the system to not run well if they get in the wrong places. Use compressed air, but don't blow on the fans and wind them up as you can damage the bearings. Hold the fan blades when dusting them. The next step is to remove and replace all the internal connectors a couple of times so the friction wipes off any oxidation.

 I just had a Linux box start locking up every couple of days. It was full of dust bunnies. Gave it a good cleaning and it hasn't locked up in two weeks.

Otherwise, I agree that the boot data in the system may have corrupted some time ago and been backed up. You may need to restore from a month ago or more to bring the system up. We just had this discussion on a NAS site I visit. Seems that NASes are on for a LONG time, rarely rebooted, and then seem not to boot if the power is cycled. Same causes.

George