Please help!!!

Ok,so here's my problem.When I try to log into my Admin account (Windows 7 Home Premium),all I get is a grey background and the explorer window.No desktop,taskbar,nothing.I can't even open the start menu with the Windows key.I'm writing this on my guest account right now.Any ideas short of reinstalling Windows since I bought the laptop used and don't have a Win 7 disk <crossing fingers>

Hi element180 and Welcome to the Forum.

You can download an iso file which you can then burn to disc. See Here.

When in your greyed out account have you tried Ctrl + Alt + Delete and cancelling once that page opens?

Downloading now .It's the damndest thing though.I didn't lose any files or anything either.iTunes plays fine and I can change my desktop background (I have to go through the control panel to personalize since the desktop seems to be hosed).I decided to explore a bit and found that I can view images with irfanview and play videos with VLC.Those are the only ones I tried.I can copy to and from my flash drive as well so I'm hoping it's not too serious.I created a second Admin account (which I'm using now) and was able to change the permissions.Here's a screenshot of exactly what I'm seeing in the account

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10154184/Clipboard01.jpg

That's all there is

What have you used to change your icons? In the past I've had some weird results when I've tried out Icon Packager.

Are you using a 3rd party theme? If so have you patched the three system files necessary to run 3rd party themes?

Is your newly created account running OK? It might also be worth running a system file check, sfc /scannow, as it looks like explorer.exe has been hosed (I modified my explorer.exe file 'incorrectly' and had pretty much the same result).

I used WinStyler (part of TuneUp Utilities 2011).The icons on my current (working) Admin account as well as the guest account are the same as my hosed admin account (the one I used to change the icons) except for the 'Computer' icon which is the standard Win 7 icon,As for the theme,it was one of the normal Win 7 themes with some simple changes made by the color manager thingy

Also...as much as I'm embarrassed to admit it...I've never run a system restore before.This is the first time I've had a problem like this.I'm even more embarrassed to admit that I didn't set a restore point before this problem happened .My question is...will I have to reinstall all my programs like I would with a fresh Windows re-install?I'm not worried about my pictures,music and personal stuff.I have all those backed up

Heh...now the new problem I'm having is...whenever I try to save something in one of the subfolders of either Program Files or Program Files (x86) I get 'You don't have permission to save in this location.Contact the administrator to obtain permission

Would you like to save in the My Documents folder instead?'

I went into my screwy Admin account and gave my current Admin account full permission (I thought).Am I missing a step here?

Um... nevermind.I solved this one myself

sfc /scannow will scan your system files and replace any corrupt files it finds.

A repair install will overwrite your system so updates will need reapplying but all your programs will (should) still be installed. Your documents if stored in the default location should also remain untouched. But, just in case the repair install cocks up, your documents etc. will also be saved in a folder called Windows.old in C:\.

By default you shouldn't be able to save downloads in the program file folders.

But it sounds more like its your old account that's corrupted. See this for moving files to a new user account: Fix a corrupted user profile.