No icons on desktop

On a few occasions just recently my win 7 pro system has come out of "screen saver" with nothing but my desktop background displayed. If I then ctrl/alt/delete the screen goes black with just the cursor showing and otherwise unuseable. After a while the background will reappear but the only way that I can get the icons and everything back is to reboot.
I have done a very thorough search for malware but none found. The problem never occurs whilst I am actually using the system and it does not always happen when it has been left to go into screen saver.
Any one any ideas?

Hi

This is a little simplistic but why don't you turn off the screen saver?
You don't really need them any more, I haven't used one for years.

And if you don't have the problem with it off you are good to go.

The problem is probably caused by Explorer.exe not restarting when it comes out of screen saver mode.

You might (not a sure thing) be able to fix it by running sfc /scannow...

From the elevated Prompt (Right click on the Prompt Icon and select run as administrator). Then type…

SFC /scannow

Scans and restores system files.
It may return some setting to the default state, if they have been modified.

Mike

Thanks Mike. I did exactly that, turned off screen saver, yesterday morning and no problems since. What puzzles me though is why this situation started in the first place. I do wonder if it could be associated with another annoyance in which occasionally some icons fail to appear in the system tray at boot time but a reboot always ensures that all then do turn up okay. Intermittent faults...bah! Do you advise enabling any of the power saver features because I did enable hibernation a while back and found that the system would not always wake up. So I disabled this feature again.

I will certainly try SFC /scannow if the problem persists.

Hi

I have hibernation active in my Windows 8 setup.
I'm only using Windows 8 at the present.

I find that sometimes the computer will come back to life but the video doesn't come back unless I restart the computer. I've always found that I've had occasional problems using Windows screen savers and sleep modes.

In Windows 7 I don't use any of the standby options.

I have a master power button that turns off everything except my computer, i.e. monitor, scanner, sound etc.

I just hit it when ever I leave my computer and let the computer stay on.
I do turn off my computer when I'm not going to be using it.

At night, when I go away from the house, or any time I'm not going to be using it for more then a couple of hours.

The main reason I don't want to leave it on all the time is dirt, when ever the fans are running it's sucking in dog and cat hair.

I have two dogs the size of ponies and a cat so hair and dust is a problem.

Mike

Mike, I used to buy those tins of compressed air to give my tower a blasting every so often but the rip-off price encouraged me to buy a compressor with blower gun. Brilliant and no problems with static as per vacs.
We have a lurcher cross (very hairy) and a 17 year old ginger cat (who like to spend his rest time on the spare bed in my office and chat as only a noisy cat can)!!!
Anyway, still no sign of the problem recurring since disabling screen-saver so will monitor the situation. Hopefully cracked it.
All best.