I searched through this site and the internet in general, and I can't seem to find any previous examples of this problem.

Basically, shuting down a program and returning to the desktop will often (about 1 of 5 times) result in a frozen desktop with all icons unclickable, and any attempt at creating new windows (say by using ctr-alt-del) will make the hourglass cursor appear, making me think something is going to happen, but then nothing does. What is odd is that it seems that all of the windows that were up before remain there, just invisible and inaccessable. For example, I had an internet radio site up before, and afterward, though I couldn't interact with it at all, it continued playing. I could even hear the ding of messages received through AIM, but I couldn't see the window, and the taskbar icon wasn't flashing orange or anything.

This problem occurs, as I said, after closing a program, generally a graphics-intensive game, but not always. It has always been a full-screen program, though. This is not a crash, it happens when I intentionally close the program. And like I said, the processes that were present before, web pages and such, were still running. It's as if my screen is replaced with a screenshot of what should be happening, like someone taking a screenshot of a desktop, icons and all, then removing the icons to screw with people. This, however, is less funny. So far I have been unable to solve this problem with anything short of a manual reset. I'd really like that to be kept from becoming a habit.

Is this a new problem? Were things working OK previously? Any new hardware or software?

If this is a new problem try a System Restore to a point prior to the problem:

start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore


If this doesn't apply or work let us know and we can go further.

Sorry that it took so long to reply, but I wanted to be sure. Yes, system restoring did solve the problem, it has not occured since.

Any idea of what happened in the first place, for future reference? I would like to be able to prevent it from occuring again.