Desktop icons, taskbar disappear

Hello,

I was surfing on Firefox, on Windows XP, with WinPatrol running. Anyway, WinPatrol tells me that several files, in succession, want to be new Startup programs. As I never asked for them, I refuse them all. For one of them, however, WinPatrol tells me that unless I know for sure it is causing problems I shouldn't get rid of it, as it is in a sensitive location. So I neither get rid of it, or accept it. It keeps reasserting itself, so I decide to get rid of it. (I don't know what it is.) While this is all happening, popup windows telling me about viruses, and how I should download antiviruses and when I close the windows they open again, etc. and then the desktop just disappears! No icons, no taskbar.

So, naturally I restart it. Problem persists. I run Symantec, it finds some viruses, suggests I reboot, but problem persists.

If I CTRL+ALT+DEL, I can NEW TASK EXPLORER, and it will briefly reappear for a few seconds, long enough for me to access the computer. (All my stuff seems to be in tact.) Then it will disappear. When I ran Symantec, during the duration of the scan, the desktop and taskbar would reappear and disappear in fits and starts. When Symantec finished, desktop disappeared.

Any advice? Thanks for your time. (Oh, by the way, I'm not really computer literate, so assume I'm dumb.) I'd appreciate any help.