Dell dimension 8400

[wnutt1]

when I turn my computer on the windows start up screen appears and then my desktop photo appears but I have no shortcut icon and no task bar just the photo. I can see my mouse cursor and when i use ctrl/alt/del that is how i shutdown. i tried cleaning and reseating the RAM and still nothing happens . The CPU fan works. Anyone have any thoughts as to my problem??? I am thinking of new MB and CPU

 

[aford10]

When you get to the desktop, use the ctrl+alt+delete-->open the task manager-->file-->new task-->explorer.exe-->this should restore everything.