text: xp start button does not work; no icons; cannot open windows? help!  ms office works, firefox works, ie works; nothing else does.  have run spybot, mcafee and several others; don't seem to have any bugs.  from a re-boot, if i click on 'start' button, menu briefly appears and then goes away, not to return.  if i click on the desktop icon on the taskbar, the icons appear on the desktop, sometimes, but i cannot click on them.  cannot open windows explorer or any other folders; they appear for about 1 second and go away.  hp pavillion pc.  hp helpdesk was no help.  any thoughts? try running a antispyware program and antivirus (boot into safe mode and see if they will run).  otherwise do a system restore to the last known date you did not have any problems.  if you can't do that, do a repair install from your xp cd.