Black screen instead of desktop??

I’ve honestly never run into a mess quite like this before.
After I finished installing Windows 7, it hits me with that Welcome screen, but once that passes, everything just goes pitch black and drops me straight into My Computer.
I can still get into all my folders and launch stuff from Program Files without any issues, but the desktop itself is just a void—not a single icon in sight, and the taskbar at the bottom is completely MIA. It’s pretty much useless because without the Start menu, I can't even shut down the machine properly.
Does anyone have a clue what went sideways here or how I can actually get my desktop screen back?

Maybe try booting up in Safe Mode to see if it actually starts... If it does, then we're probably looking at some nasty malware, so your best bet would be to grab Malwarebytes and AdwCleaner to run a full scan on the machine. Have you given that GPU driver reinstall a shot yet?

It sounds like the explorer.exe process hasn't kicked in, or maybe something went sideways with it during startup. To get your desktop back to normal, just pull up the Task Manager, go to File, select New Task, and then hit Run. Type in explorer.exe and press Enter. If all your icons suddenly pop back onto the screen, then you'll know exactly where the issue lies. From there, it’s just a matter of digging around to figure out what's blocking that process from launching automatically when Windows boots up.

So, I went ahead and did that, but honestly? Not a single thing changed.

Should I go with both of those tips or what?

Everything looks totally fine in Safe Mode, so I went ahead and did a clean reinstall of Windows, which actually fixed the whole thing.
I guess some nasty little virus managed to slip right past my AVG antivirus, just sliding under the radar like a stray dog in a quiet neighborhood.

The main thing is that the issue is finally sorted out..