Windows TaskBar and start menu is gone! desktop icons unmovable

Help!

After I rebooted my computer a few things occured.

1. Logining took extremely long time...
2. after a long time finally desktop appeared however my taskbar and start menu was gone, no they are not hidden, just gone, clicking start menu button on my keyboard doesnt bring up the start menu either.
3. the icons on desktop are unmovable...I can click on them and run them but cannot move them!

I have tried the following:

1. Ran spybot search and destroy - found nothing

2. Tried to access housecall online virus scan and it doesn't work - it just won't load the page where it is suppose to run the scan, bottom of browser just says done.

3. Since I don't have my start menu button...I can't even get to control panel..so to access system restore I have to ctrl-alt-del and then click file--> run...and type in cmd. Once in command prompt i goto c:\windows\system32\restore\ and type rstrui.exe from command prompt. Once I do that I get this message appearing saying

"System restore is not able to protect your computer. Please restart your computer, and then run System Restore again. "

to me that doesn't sound right...

4. I tried it in safe mode as well....and there is no start menu bar is there. but I can't expand it...its just a line at the bottom of the screen...unlike normal mode however there is a hint of the start menu bar......however I have to right click on it and goto properties and activate "show quick launch" then i can expand the start menu and I can actually click the "start" button.

I can run system restore directly from the start menu but same thing happens

I don't know what is wrong....I can only remember that I installed adobe flash player and that was pretty much the last thing I did on the computer prior to this.

Please help as soon as possible as this happens to be the "server" computer at work and all the saved files are on this computer. Other people on the network access their files saved on this computer.

Is this a spyware or malware of somesort? I have been searching the net and found minimal help.

Any suggestions and help very much appreciated...and not it is very time sensative!!! thank you all in advance. My msn messenger is Removed by Moderator I would prefer to have help real time for this nasty issue if possible...thank you!

 

thanks everyone for their input on this weird case.

I think I have exhausted all the ideas out there and just didn't work. I even called up Dell's tech support and they said that I tried pretty much everything on their list of things to do too.

Unfortunately I had to run the built in pc restore function so I had to backup all my data.

funny thing is because copy and paste didn't work and click and drag didn't work so I had to do an xcopy on all the files from command prompt.

safe mode wouldn't let me copy either!

so at least my system is working now thank everyone for their suggestions and input I really do appreciate it!

 

This has happend to me too.

I am having the exact same problem. It must be a virus of some kind. If anyone can tell me how to get rid of it I would be greatfull. However there are some rather clever things it seems to be doing. It disabled my internet connection(on my laptop now), also wont allow me to install new software, so I cant update my virus defs or install a new anti-virus program. Also can't run any anti-virus software already on the computer. I can run almost all my programs(with poor performance), just not the anti-virus programs. Plus I have all the problems stated above in the original posting. If you know whats going on and/or can help let me know please. Thanks.