No Start Button, No Task Manager...ton of problems.

My dad decided to bring his friend's machine to take a look at. It's running Windows XP Professional and this thing has too many problems and I have no idea where to begin or a clue on how to fix it.

For starters, there is no Start Button on the taskbar but if I hit the windows key it'll show the start menu minus icons and at the very top of the screen.

Attempting to load the Task Manager does nothing. I can click on the task manager button and it'll just go back to the desktop without anything happening.

I attempted to start up their antivirus security only that won't work either. I immediately get a "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem." error message. This occurs for every program I try to launch including any new programs I try to install.

I'm unable to load anything like Services or Event Viewer since I just get another error message reading "MMC failed to initialize because it was installed incorrectly or because a portion of the registry has become corrupted. Make sure the file Mmcndmgr.dll is registered by running "regsvr32 %SystemRoot%\system32\mmcndmgr.dll".

I tried to boot into safe mode but that will hang at MUP.sys and never boot.

Any suggestions on what I should do? I need all the help I can get. Thanks

Hi seryth, and welcome to techspot. after reading your thread, you could go here http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic58138.html. after saying that, i personally think it would be best to clean the whole lot, with a fresh install of windows.
you could be going on like that for a week or more, and still get nowhere. save what you can to disc and format. that's what i would do if it were me!:wave: