I'm running XP home on HP Pavilion 7965, 512mb ram. The
problem is only on boot-up.The desktop is totally empty
(no icons at all)and nothing I do will bring them up.I
have to either load again into safe mode, close and
restart (most of the time this fixes it), or using task
manager close and re-load explorer.exe.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks - Kirky.