XP Home Desktop problem

[DoctorReno]

I talked to a friend on the phone and she is experiencing a strange desktop problem with XP Home.

She has a newer Dell system. She had her desktop with wallpaper and shortcuts setup the way she wanted. Reciently, the following behavior started.
When she starts her machine it will boot, load XP and go to her desktop just fine but in about 3 seconds her "good" desktop will be replaced with a totally blue screen with an open browser window with "The page cannot be found blah blah blah" message. There are no icons whatsoever nor is there a taskbar, start button etc.
She discovered that she can get her taskbar to appear by pressing the Windows key and the taskbar will appear and remain visible thereafter but none of the desktop icons or shortcuts she uses are visible.
I had her click on the Show Desktop icon in the Quick Launch bar and her "good" desktop appeared. She can open, for example, the Recycle bin, but when she closes it it goes back to the "bad" desktop.
I had her go into the Display Properties which is only accessabe thru the "good" desktop not the "bad" desktop and reset the configurations. It makes the changes on the "good" desktop but the "bad" desktop will still appear and "cover" the "good" desktop.
Any ideas how and why this is occuring?
Thanks

[Siliconjunkie]

Check this first http://www.techimo.com/forum/t75868.html

[DoctorReno]

Silicon: I have to clarify something... apparently this started occuring about 4 mo ago, not as reciently as I implied so I'm not so sure this is her problem although I will have her go thru the procedure.

Incidentally, I believe I was hit with the above virus as well as several friends am right now working on removal and patch.

[DoctorReno]

She fortunately did not have the virus but the desktop problem still exists.
Anyone have any idea what to do or try?

[stroyal]

it could be infected by one of those sleaze ware programs.
a couple of years ago a similar thing happened to me but the bad desk top looked exactly like the good desktop and it would try to dial up to an offshore number. I was using a modem on another computer on my network at the time so the program could not find a modem. (bet that saved me a bundle!) I don't remember which sleaze ware it was, but that was the problem that time.

[meese]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run

Go to that key and see what apps startup when she boots. Also check the processes that are running. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and select Task Manager, Select the Processes tab. See if a process is out of the ordinary.

[DoctorReno]

Thanks meese, will try that. This is slow since we live a distance apart. Like one step a day towards resolving this for her. I'll let you know, check back tomorrow.

[DoctorReno]

I had her take screen dumps of the Task Manager Applications and Processes windows. I am attaching them here. I edited out where it displays her name.
Do you see anything abnormal running?

[DoctorReno]

Guess I can only attach one pic at a time

[cbuddha42]

hum run addaware or whatever and make sure her avg is staying up to date. if seh still has probalems you might want to disable all the no exential processes (stuff like the win media sdmi)and see if you fix it by killing everything you can off. if you do then reboot and kill them one at a time till you find out which one it is and then look up what it is and how to remove it