My desktop disappeared

After being infected with a few virii, I decided to re-install win2k/p form scratch.
I completely removed everything, even used a maxtor utility to zero out the disks (not easy when it's a RAID system).
After reinstalling the OS, all SPs and patches,then the apps, everything ran fine.
Only glitch was that earthlink was unable to complete a connection, although the handshake wen tfine.
Through this process, I had rebooted several times, including after everything was finished. I ran a bunch of apps, and even DLed a bunch of pictures from the digicam to make sure that the interface was working.
I ran AVwin and McAfee on it to check for diseases.
So, after getting the error from earthlink, I reboot, and....

NOTHING, absolutely nothing on the screen.
I get the windows trill, but absolutely no icons on the screen, not even a task bar - a completely blank screen. It does remember my screen color choice (no wallpaper). Hitting C-A-D and running task mgr show nothing but windows system tasks, no user tasks. Not even the tasks in the startup file are there, nor programs that go into the tray next to the clock (no clock, either). Booting into safe mode shows the same, blank screen.
Booting to a DOS prompt and looking in docs and settings shows that my startup and desktop folders have everything that I set up (even favorites are there).
The only thing that I have added is Outpost Pro, but that survived a couple of reboots and a few learning cycles.
SO... what happened to my desktop?
The machine is a zombie right now.

This is enough to make me re-install Win98 on everything ;-(