No Icons at Startup

When I started up my XP machine today things went as usual until the
wallpaper appeared on the screen, but no icons were on it.

I used another computer to search for suggestions to this problem (there
was a huge number of them) and found this one which "helped":

********

Open Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete).

Click "Processes" tab then "Image Name" tab to sort the list alphabetically.

Select all listings of "explorer.exe", then click "End Process" tab for
each one. (I only found one.)

On the "Applications" tab click "New Task"

Type "explorer.exe" (without quotes), then click OK.

********


Those steps restore a normal screen with icons on it, and everything I
run works fine until the next time I restart the computer and once again
the icons aren't there.

Obviously I'm not comfortable with having to run that "fix" every time I
power up the computer.

What to do next folks?

Thanks,

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.