please help quick- no taskbar/icons!

[mb26]

ok well i was playing a couple of games on this POS laptop and it crashed a few times, but it usually does that so nothing new, anyway, i ended up not having any taskbar starting up.. i have the desktop background but icons or taskbar..

i tried using CTRL ALT DEL, and opening c:\windows\explorer.exe but nothing happened.. i also tried to run system restore by loading the start menu folder in internet explorer, but it just gave me a blank box (WHY does system restore never work when u want it to!).
most programs will work if i use the task manager to load them but explorer (ie the windows main thingy, not 'windows explorer' to browse files), system restore and WMP are ones which dont. (the basic 'mplayer2.exe' does work however).

i have no reason to suspect its a virus or crapware, i run AVG and zonealarm all the time, and this computer is always unstable.

anyway, short of reinstalling windows (which i will do at some point but dont want to now) what can i do!?

i'd like to sort this out by tomorrow so if you could help quickly that would be great

it is of course Windows XP in case you didn't guess. it happens on all logons AFAIK. i recently (re)installed the wireless card, so i wonder if it was that, however the drivers were winXP certified IIRC.

edit: also, whilst mplayer2 can run, it doesn't seem to be able to play any music.. but games do make 'noise'..

[Force Flow]

Try booting up in safe mode and run spybot and adaware for spyware scans. Then try running a full AV scan.

[mb26]

i have tried booting in safe mode, still no desktop and system restore didn't work still etiher.

i am sure that its notthing to do with crapware of any kind (unless u class windows as such) but i'll do all those scans anyway.

[ThePoor]

pop the cd in a repair it, you dont have to re-install XP.

[Urban Earth]

You may have accidentally hidden your taskbar. Have you tried moving your mouse over the area usually occupied by it? Try that and let us know if anything happens.

AJ

[mb26]

'You may have accidentally hidden your taskbar' thanks but i'm not that stupid (or lucky). i would be suprising if i had hiden the taskbar AND icons at the same time and completely forgotten about it, but no.

'pop the cd in a repair it, you dont have to re-install XP.'
verrryy good point (why didn't i think of that, guess i am somewhat stupid ).. but i dont have the 'proper' CD would it work with a recovery CD?

[mb26]

FYI i reinstalled the whole thing. there was no repair on the recovery CD.. um anyway it doesn't go BSOD all the time anymore (yet), and of course all the desktop is back. so its fixed a few serious proplems i think. still a couple remain but i'm working on those..

[ThePoor]

in that case, you can try system restore....

[mb26]

lol. sorry if i wasn't clear but i did a clean install of XP again using the recovery disk supplied with the laptop. i've wiped the whole thing and started again. its at restore point number 0.
system restore didn't work before. i was just posting to let people know and so that no one wasted any time trying to figure it out or posting or whatever. but if someone happens to know a solution without reinstalling then i'm sure the next person it happens to will be very happy for you to post the solution.