Rochelle I had a similar problem, a virus or should I say 3 that were rewriting programs, viruses in to my system, If I may sugest downloading a program called VIRUS FIGHTER it has a 30 day free trial ...
This is a fix for WinXP No Icons or taskbar
First do ALT CTRL DEL to bring up the task manager then click new task, cut and paste this
Menu\Programs\Accessories\Windows Explorer.lnk"
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