Vista Explorer/Desktop blank

I recently purchased an HP DV6000t custom laptop (specs in sig). It's about a month old, and this is the first time I've had this problem. Last night I shut down vista and once it was done shutting everything down and parking the HD I closed the lid.

This morning I open the lid and as is it's wont, it started up. After I logged in, until the desktop was supposed to appear. I got the cursor, which I can control, but instead of an active desktop, I get just a black, non-intereactive desktop. The whole screen is black and doesn't respond.

I can get to the task manager, and am able to launch an explorer folder from there, but otherwise it appears as though none of the vista components are loaded. So far I have:

Tried to boot to the last known good version
Rolled back my device drivers

I am also able to boot in safe mode and that looks like it is working.

Has anyone else experienced this? I've searched around for a while and haven't found anything helpful. I need this laptop to vpn into work in about an hour, so I thought I'd post a plea for help!

HELP!

Thanks!

 

So, some progress. I have discovered that by bringing up the taskmanager I can click File then Run to run any of the programs on my machine. Everything will run except the Device Manager in the Control Panel, which just hangs. I still don't see anything on the desktop, it's just all blank with only the cursor showing.

I suspect that there is some sort of driver conflict, but I can't figure out what to do about it. I'm going to try and DL fresh drivers for my vid card tonight..

 

Ok, so a solution of sorts. I brought up TaskMan and killed off all instances of explorer, the went to file/run and ran explorer again. This launched all the other Vista dependencies and got my desktop back. This didn't work immediately, I had to make multiple attempts at this, but it did work eventually.

Next time I'm buying a mac. Or dumping Vista for Linux.