Flashing or missing desktop icons

Please can anyone help me with this annoying problem..

Whenever i turn on my laptop it starts up and the icons show and then start flashing on and off or just vanish.

I started up in safe mode and tried to download anti virus software but i cannot download any antivirus stuff. This didnt work so i downloaded from another PC and transferred onto my laptop. After that whenever i tried to run the software nothing happens..

Any help on this would be appreciated...

Thanks

Not sure, could be a virus. Or it could be that explorer.exe is stopped. explorer.exe is the process that shows your desktop icon and task bar. Is the task bar also disappearing?

Try this, run task manager (ctrl+Alt+del) then click [File] menu then [new task] then type explorer.exe then [Ok]. This will try to run explorer.exe again.

hey bigdp,

1. Dont know if you considered this, but just to have it said...
you need to boot up in safe mode with network drivers to download anything

2. Based on this, it could even be some graphic driver bug or whatever...
but since youve taken the virus path already, lets try this first...
download a bootable anti virus cd image like

www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-antivir-rescue-system
or
support.kaspersky.com/en/viruses/rescuedisk
burn the image to cd, boot from it, run a scan and check the result

3. Otherwise, if all the above didnt helped i suggest you to reinstall/renew your graphic
drivers

4. If all the above didnt helped, give some further information in your next post plz

-chrnxR