Hi sarcasm,

I'm not sure if this is your problem but definitely worth checking. Sometimes DEP will block Explorer.exe (bug). Confirm if this is your problem, since you have no task bar use Ctrl+Alt+Del to open your Task Manager. Click File/Run and type in sysdm.cpl and select okay. This should bring up System properties, navigate to the DEP tab (Date Execution Prevention) under Performance options. Look to the bottom of the DEP window, hopefully it states Your computer's processor does not support hardware based DEP. If your computer does not support DEP then clearly this is not the problem. Look in the large DEP window and see if you see Explorer.exe in the box. If so, change the option to: * Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those that I select, put a check in the box next to the blocked item and click okay. Unfortunately unblocking the item don't always work, although disabling DEP is not recommended, sometimes you're left with no choice. You can disable DEP but you'll need to access your boot.ini file (System properties/Startup and Recovery). Type "AlwaysOff" w/o quotes after "noexecute", save and reboot.

/noexecute=OptIn
/noexecute=AlwaysOff