XP Start menu disappearance

[SleepyMouse]

Hi All!

Newbie forum poster here, and am typing with my thumbs via my phone for your help...

I have logged in under my username in XP upon normal bootup, but the start menu and any desktop items are not appearing... Thereby preventíng me from actually DOING anything with my computer.

I can Ctrl Alt Del and see processes running... Am afraid this could be a virus of some sort?

Apologies if this is the wrong forum section, but would like to get some help...

My poor thumbs... :\

 

[SleepyMouse]

All right! After some surfing of the forums via my phone, I was able to figure out how to access programs with my task manager.

It looks like this problem is otherwise unsolvable for now... I found a very helpful thread in this forum for recovery which I cannot link to here as this is my first post and the forum won't allow it. ;P

I don't have cdrom drive hardware in my computer right now (it's a custom-built in-progress), which seems to be the requirement. :\

Not sure how to move this thread to the proper category, will do if I can.