My Computer will not open

I posted this in the Windows XP General List about 12 hours ago and have had
no answer, so I am posting it here. Hopefully, someone can help.

When I click on My Computer, Network Neighborhood, or Control Panel, an
hourglass sits next to my cursor for a short time and then goes away. They
do not open. After trying to open one of them, I find an additional
explorer.exe on my taskmanager. If I open the computer, however, in the Safe
Mode, I have no problem opening these up. I tried disabling various
hardwares and still couldn't open them up. I've used MSCONFIG to disable all
Startup programs, and that doesn't help.

My computer is home built, runs Windows XP Home, an MSI K7N2G motherboard
with the latest BIOS, and 1 GB of RAM. At present, System Idle Process shows
99% of the CPU is free. The CPU is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ running at 2 GHz.

I can get into My Computer and the Control Panel by setting them as Menus
from Taskbar Properties, and I can get into Network Neighborhood through the
Control Panel, but it is irritating having to do so.

There doesn't seem to be an answer in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (or I've
missed it). Can anybody help?

Russ Coover