Desktop icons / start menu etc disappeared

Hope someone can help me - all desktop icons & the start menu have disappeared from Win XP desktop. I can't right click on the screen but do get the Task Manager when I press ctrl alt del. Some programs can be opened from this (but the drop down menu does not populate automatically).

I'm up to date on virus scans etc (last scan was yesterday evening).

Have pressed F8 and rebooted last good configuration but no change. Have also rebooted in safe mode but its the same. Can anyone confirm what I need to do to repair this. Thanks in advance.

Try a System Restore to a point prior to the problem.

You can start System restore from the Task Manager via:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

Thanks for that - it did work and all the desktop icons re-appeared, but when I shut down and restart they disappear again so I have to do the process again back to the last known good configuration. Any ideas ? Many thanks.

Any idea what, if any, software was installed or settings changed that might coincide with this issue?

You might try going to start Run... msconfig --> startup

Here you can see what is starting on your computer.

You can enable or disable at will.

Perhaps you will find a process that is re-calling this error.