Taskbar and desktop icons not loading

Apologies this is long but I wanted to give all available information...

I have a friend's daughter's laptop I am trying to get going again
WITHOUT any recovery disks
It says on the bottom it is a Toshiba 1410 PS141A0M0A however googling
and checking the Toshiba website never reveals this particular model or
anything remotely close other than the 1410.

What I can tell you about it is
* It is an older pc running XP Pro
* No service packs installed when handed over to me
* Expired Norton Antivirus (which I have uninstalled)
* I can't find any sign of any firewall and can't find windows firewall
or security centre. No warning icons show up on the taskbar
* No System Restore points existed
* A programme called MacroVirus was installed which claimed there were
1000 infections or something and to register to fix them. I chose not to
do this as I am not familiar with the programme.
* There are no P2P file sharing programmes installed.

The computer appears to start booting up and gets to the desktop with
the owner's chosen wallpaper and stops. No taskbar or desktop icons.
I can get the taskbar and desktop icons to load by opening Task Manager
-File -New Task and then click browse in the Create New Task
box-Choose Desktop on the left-Right click the My Computer icon that
now appears on the right and choose Open. This also successfully opens
windows explorer. (typing explorer.exe into the Create New Task window
shows it running for a couple of seconds under processes but it then
vanishes without ever opening).
The computer appears to work fine once the taskbar is loaded although I
have not had it connected to the internet. Two error messages come up
during the final booting.
The first says, in part, Windows cannot find '/idlist,:xxx:xxxx,' where
the xxxs represent different numbers every time.
The 2nd error is in a window with TouchED error as it's title which I
think has something to do with the Touchpad. It says Retrieval of
"THotkey" failed 0x00031402, 0x00000002

What I have tried
**I installed Spyware Terminator which found some critical 'things'
which I chose to delete

**I ran the Avast Virus Cleaner which detected nothing

**I tried booting into safe mode - no taskbar
**Tried booting with enable boot logging twice and ntblog.txt says on line 2
10 4 2006 so I think it's not new. There are hundreds of drivers that
did not load in that file
**I have tried Diagnostic Startup and Selective Startup - still no taskbar

I have spent days searching the net and came across a list of 4 things
to try none of which worked

**(1) Restore a Missing "userinit" Registry Value:

1. Copy below and paste into Notepad:

----------copy inside only----------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Userinit"="C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\userinit.ex e,"

----------copy inside only----------

2. If your Windows is not on drive C: replace C: with your Windows
drive letter and Save-As Userinit.reg (or any name + .reg).
3. Double-click or right-click and merge into the registry.
4. Restart.


**(2) Delete an Incorrect "Explorer.Exe" Entry in the Registry:

1. Open the Run box and enter: regedit
2. Go to this key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image
File Execution Options]
3. If you see "explorer.exe" as a subkey below, delete it.
4. Restart.
I did not find the above so could not delete it


**(3) Restore a Missing "explorer.exe" Entry in the Registry:

1. Copy below and paste into Notepad:

----------copy inside only----------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"="explorer.exe"

----------copy inside only----------

2. Save-As WinLogon.reg (or any name + .reg).
3. Double-click or right-click and merge into the registry.
4. Restart.


**(4) Exlorer.exe is Missing:

If explorer.exe is not in C:\WINDOWS\ then insert your Windows CD and,
using the 'Task Manager' (File - New Task), run the 'System File
Checker' utility with this command: sfc /scannow

Explorer.exe is not missing

**I also found the following
This is the key that needs to be deleted...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image
File Execution Options\explorer.exe

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image
File Execution Options\iexplorer.exe
but these keys do not exist

**I did a repair install using an XP pro SP2 OEM disk which appeared to
go fine but changed nothing (except now the computer needs activation
again). I followed exactly the instructions here
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

**I created a new user account. This account loads to a plain blue
desktop with no wallpaper, taskbar or icons. While using the above
procedure to get the taskbar back it then loads the default windowsXP
wallpaper as well as the taskbar and icons etc.

Does anyone know if this is fixable or should I try formatting with my
XP pro OEM CD and finding necessary drivers somehow? Last option is to
contact Toshiba as the computer owner is a student on a very low budget.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this.