My Desktop won't work! - any suggestions?

I had my laptop charging and I turned it on after it was on hibernate. I was already logged into my email and hit a button to go back to the inbox, when my laptop froze, mouse and all. I decided to try to start the task manager, and there was no response. I turned it off the "wrong" way by pushing and holding the button and turned it off. I turned it back on a few minutes later and everything was fine, until the desktop loaded. Nothing on the desktop loaded and the background was not wha I had set it to. I opened up the task manager to try to start up using the "run" option and entered in explorer.exe and all it did was change the desktop background to what I had it set to but still none of the shortcuts will show up but, yet, I can run programs just fine. Any ideas/suggestions? This is really frusrating as I have only had this laptop a few days.

What os is it?

If you right click on the desktop, do you still get the menu options? If so, click on Personalize (assuming Vista). DO you see all of the normal options here?

If you run a program such as Internet Explorer, is it pointing to your normal Home Page?

glad yr prog run fine

sorry, in advance, am only a 32 novice user thinking I could help, am deliquent