No icons Windows 7 Ultimate

Been on a few forums with this never got the problem sorted hope you can help.
Clean installs 6 or 7 now start putting drivers in eventually lose my icons.
Thought I sorted it with a thread I found saying use minimum memory and that worked untill I added the other 2 then big icons again.
Just read a post here about con>alt> del applications>file>run >explorer I get a black screen
Can you put Sata3 drives straight into mobo now once you have got your boot and slave so to speak in order?
I can get them back if I start in safe mode but crap graphics then.

Uhhh.. what. Post a screenshot.

I can't. If I take a screeny (print screen) I have no icons or tool bar to paste into paint or similar

Is this a legal copy of this OS? Doesn't sound like it!

This is a couple of copied posts from another forum

I have loaded it from usb off ebay 2 extra dvds he has sent to help, one checked twice on his own pc to make sure it worked and have loaded an old one I had that worked fine like I mentioned but just got fed up with activation key requirement from Windows that prompted me to get a genuine one.

Now bought Corsair Neutron 120gb ssd same problem (previous was Corsair GT 120gb).
I loaded drivers a bit more methodical last night night, when prompted to re-start I did instead of doing them all at the end.
All was ok till nvidea gt570 drivers (latest and greatest as other versions had the same problem on previous installs)

NO ICONS....NO TASKBAR

Just bought a genuine Windows 8 see if that helps