No Icons, no Start button...help please

I read through lots of the other posts and I still don't understand how to fix my problem. I start my computer and I only see my background; no icons, no task bar, no START button, right or left clicking on mouse does nothing and CTRL+ALT+DEL does nothing. I only have a screen with my my background. I can not figure out how to fix this. I see all of the ideas that are posted, but if I can't do anything on my computer how am I supposed to delete files or whatever. I would greatly appreciate some assistance!