Shortcut icons on desktop

I run Windows XP Home SE. I left my computer for a while yesterday and when I returned all of my shortcut icons on my desktop were on the left side of my screen and there was a vertical panel on the left side with icons for the control panel and lots of other things. I can't get rid of the panel and when I try to line up my icons by dragging and dropping them, they will not stay in place. They just go back to the other side of the screen. It seems to me that I had this problem once with Windows 98, but I can't remember how I fixed it. Could someone help me get my desktop back in order. Thanks in advance.
Red

 

Right click on a blank area of the desktop and mouse over to 'Arrange Icons By >' and a menu will come up. Make sure there is no check mark next to 'Auto Arrange' by clicking on it. I prefer to enable 'Align To Grid' to keep the icons lined up neatly, but I can still put them where-ever I want. As to the vertical panel thing with icons for the control panel and such... I know what you're talking about, but I can't remember how to get rid of it. I'd have to be physically sitting at the PC and I'd just start trying to drag it here or there, right click on it and see what options come up, and just mess around with it. Yeah, not great advice, but without actually using the PC, I'm not sure exactly how to remove it.

 

Thanks dlb for the advice. Problem is, I have been doing basicly what you advised. I'll keep trying and would appreciate it if you would let me know if you think of anything else that I haven't tried. Wish I could figure out what caused the problem because the computer was just idle. Thanks again,
Red

 

I was thinking about it, and I think there's also a setting for "lock desktop" or something like that. Somehow, that may have been enabled. If I'm not going to be using the PC for over 2 or 3 hours, I generally turn it off, just so no strange things will happen....