I am unable to open any shortcuts on my desktop on Windows XP

<bold>Please help.</bold I cannot open anything but google chrome or firefox. I am fairly new to windows and I am normally an apple person but for now this is the best that I can get. Everytime I try to click on an icon or shortcut/app. nothing happens. No error messages appear nor does anything. It just doesn't work. I know there is already a post involving this error. But I have tried everything that the forum has suggested and nothing works. Please help ASAP.