Seems to me that there was some malware not too long ago that would hide everything on your desktop and leave you with a black screen. have you checked your pc to see if it is clean?
I have not had a chance to use this yet but Panda is a popular antivirus and they have a boot disk that's supposed to work well. Maybe you should burn this iso to disk and set your boot order to the cd drive as the first boot device. Pop the Panda boot disk in your drive and see if it picks anything up
Panda SafeCD 4.4.3.0 | Panda Research Blog
Could you pm a link to the malware alert of what you think this persons pc may have caught ?
If thats true, he'll need to get rid of the infestation very soon, what surprises me is that windows didn't make any indication of a possible infestation.
Even windows defender if installed in the BG may have made some sort of warning to the user.
If his windows security is down and disabled, your exactly right joe, he has malware problems in there.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-system-checkIf you are infected with System Check it is important that you do not delete any files from your Temp folder or use any temp file cleaners. This is because when the infection is installed it will delete shortcuts found in various locations and store backups of them in the %Temp%\smtmp folder. It does this so that you when try to launch a program from your start menu, none of your shortcuts will appear and thus making you think that your computer has a serious problem. Therefore, you do not want to delete any of the files in your Temp folder as it will remove the backups
Here's one instance reported
explorer.exe missing from computer - Microsoft Answers
In this thread the op calls it "Windows Restore virus"
Infected by Windows Restore virus, desktop icons missing - Malwarebytes Forum
There's also some malware that states your hard drive is bad, and by purchasing their software they will fix it....
one called "System Check" is nasty too
Remove System Check (Uninstall Guide)
How to remove Hard Drive Diagnostic and HardDrive Diagnostic | My Anti Spyware
These guys will stop at nothing to scam you out of your hard earned money