explorer will not stay up

I have been working on my husbands computer all day. First thing this morning when he turned it on, all of his icons and start menu disappeared. I went to task manager and ran explorer. This makes the desktop items appear for a few seconds, then disappear, then back on, for about 5 min. I then have to run explorer again to see them at all.

I came in here and started reading threads, and found a couple of malware that needed to be removed. I have been following through with the READ & RUN ME FIRST items, but have come to a point where i cannot go any further. since the items disappear, it will not allow me to open or use anything. When i go to explore from the start menu it comes up, but disappears along with the rest of the desktop before i get a chance to get to FOLDER OPTIONS. This kept happening so i rebooted the machine. Now I cannot get the start menu or icons to even show by running explorer.exe. It shows it as running in the processes in windows task manager, but only the start button and the time show up, the rest stay hidden. I get an hourglass when i try to click on the start button.

What should i do next?