Hello im crystal...right to the point...friend brings me his laptop. Sais he inserted windows Xp re-insatllation disk thinking it had microsoft office and word. Gets the pop-up need to be activate through microsoft, locks up. He restarted and DESKTOP IS GONE, CANT RIGHT CLICK, CANT ACCESS TASK MANAGER, CANT WIND+RUN KEY. I tried bios change boot to DVD, changed registry value to {0} for hide icons, Safemode has icons, did system restore. Only thing left is recovery console right? He does not have the ASR disk (of course not who does lol) I know I will have to re-create one but can this be done from safe mode...Oh and i ran a HJT log..and there were no C:/system32 files in the log???..he DOES have the windows genuine advantage pop-ups, pretty sure its the rogue program..in looking at system32 files it was created 2 years ago..so this shouldnt be virus related.....but thast my question..is ASR the only option left and can i recreate the disk in safe mode....