Windows starts, nothing but task mgr availabl

Hello,

I recently had a virus and in removing it, had to dump an infected motherboard driver. When I tried to boot back into Windows (XP) I received an error that nvata.sys was missing.

I installed Windows XP on another harddrive and found and installed the nvata file into the proper directory, and windows booted to the desktop, but no icons or taskbar were there. I know this had been dealt with in this forum before, but here's the difference: not only can't I get task manager to work (it comes up and I can end some processes but not use the "new task", but when I try to boot into safe mode, I still get the blank desktop.

I've tried renaming explorer, but that didn't help.

Appreciate your input.