While intalling a codec (3ivx D4 4.5.1) and, at the same time, compressing a dvd with DVDShrink, my system hung. Applications froze at any attempt to close/minimise and when i simply clicked on their windows. Anyways, I had to force a shutdown because no other application, including the shutdown program, would work, by removing power to the systems. From there, windows refused to load; it would cut-off in the middle of loading, so i ran "chkdsk /R" on the partition from the recovery console on the startup disk and then loaded the OS in Safe Mode and then... no desktop icons, wallpaper or explorer. I restarted into normal XP mode and the same thing: no desktop icons, no wallpaper or no explorer. I cant even run applications including wmplayer.exe (Windows Media Player, Control Panel, System management [compmgmt.exe... or something like that]- and who knows how many others:( Help please!

have you tried "last known good configuration" on the windows startup meun ??