Problems keep piling on...
 

So I'm using remote desktop connection (RDC) to work on this lab computer set up at my school. Yesterday, I managed to get the processor going at 100% due to explorer choking, and so I had some serious problems trying to log off. However, I kept trying to get back in, and through some crazy sequence of closing stuff, I managed to get access to the windows toolbar and log off. Then I logged back in and voila, everything was back to normal.

Now the real problem occured when I managed to use up all the processor again today. However, this time, instead of doing exactly waht I did last time, I managed to open up task manager and end task on the explorer. That was a big mistake! When you end task on explorer, all the icons on the screen go away as well as the taskbar. I can't get access to anything. All I see are a nice blue screen (that would be basically the wallpaper), and I am able to move my mouse, but I can't right click to even get a menu.

I can't use Ctrl-Alt-Del, because apparently that gets routed to my laptop that I'm running RDC on. I can't use WindowsButton-L, cause once again that locks my laptop (though I'm not sure why I even tried that). Is there a keyboard shortcut to perhaps give me the task manager (though I'm pretty sure the one the lab computer gives me has no logoff option, I still want to check).

Also, another simpler solution would be to tell me how to get my icons and taskbar and such back.

I want to curse out the explorer, but right now my parents are sleeping, and I don't want to curse on this board.

Thanks a lot

Did you try Win+R to get a run menu, then type in explorer?

There should be a button somewhere so you can send keypresses to the remote computer. Click that and give a CTRL ALT DEL - Hit Applications tab, and New Task, type explorer.exe

You might want to "hard" examine the machine as well.

Tried the windows-R, it didn't give me the run menu.

I managed to get around this problem with the cheapest hack ever. I kept hitting all sorts of combinations of buttons, which ended up popping up a "Windows utilities" menu. This allowed me to open up utlities that helped people who couldn't read well to use a Narrator option, and the windows onscreen keyboard, where you can click on what you want to type. I wasn't able to get this to work for me directly as no combination of keypresses was getting me what I wanted. Then I managed to somehow get the help menu for that keyboard to pop up a few times, which I then promptly closed because it seemed useless. But then, I noticed that it had a link on it, so I clicked it, which then opened up IE. I used that to open up C:, went up to my computer, used the side menu to go to control panel, created a new admin account, closed Remote Desktop, then logged back in with the new account which logged off my old account.

Did I mention I hate having to work in windows??
*curses loudly*

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

Best. Fix. Ever. :)