Freshly Installed XP Pro has no Taskbar or Start button

I have just installed Win XP Pro in a freshly formatted partition. It appeared to be installing properly, loaded all the drivers, and spent time configuring, but came up with a normal desktop but no Taskbar or START button. Same result after several reboots. The only thing I've been able to access is Task Manager which shows explorer.exe running even though I can't access it.

However, in Safe Mode, I appear to have a fully functioning OS ( except cannot access internet). I have read the previous threads of CHASLANG and followed his appropriate suggestions. Regedit shows the shell to be explorer.exe. But sfc /scannow says "Windows File Protection could not initiate a scan of protected system files." and then follows with "The RPCV server is unavailable" I have no way to install Hijack This. Since this is on a freshly formatted drive and can't access the internet, I just can't believe that this is caused by malware ... but I also can't believe that this is happening at all with a fresh installation of Windows.

I neglected to mention that while explorer.exe is running, it is ponderously slow ... like 10 min. per command, and it takes over 1/2 hr. to get through the driver log on startup and about 1 1/2 hrs. to get fully loaded. But I do have enough functioning that I should be able to do whatever is necessary to get it running in normal mode if only I knew what is necessary.

 

The task bar and start menu didn't actually get dragged down to the bottom of the screen did they? See if you can drag it back up, it is possible to minimize them.

 

I've had a similar problem recently, can you still access the start menu by hitting the Windows key on your keyboard? If so, go to Control Panel -> Taskbar and Start Menu, and then check the box "Show Quick Launch Bar", hit apply, and then if it still isn't up you should be able to drag it up from the bottom (if you see a little strip of blue at the bottom of your screen)...

Hope this helps...