I am hoping I can find an answer here.. It all started when I needed to do an Excel sheet in Microsoft Office. It said that there had been a recent change in the application and I needed to reinstall the program from the CD. I can't find the CD so I decided to do a restore to an earlier time hoping it would go back to when Office worked. The restore went back 2 weeks but it still could not open Office so I did another restore going back another 2 weeks. After that my computer starts but only shows the picture that I have for wallpaper. No icons, no taskbar, nothing. The CD Drive does not read CD's, and when I try to start it up in Safe mode it just hangs up with a black screen and Safe mode written in each corner. I can open the task manager and everything I select to open comes back saying it can'f find the application to open it. I don't know what to try next. I can't even get into setup. HELP!

Try running system restore from the command prompt.

1. Restart your system
2. When the system first boots, type F8 to bring up the boot menu
3. Select the Safe Mode with Command Prompt option
4. Log-on as administrator if needed
5. At your command prompt type %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

Thank you for responding to my problem. I did what you suggested and I get the message that it is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
But now after doing that ,I open the task manager and there is a flolder named cmd.exe in the applications window when there was nothing there before. I click on it and the task manager closes.
While still in the task manager I click on processes and this is what is listed there:
Taskmgr.exe
Cmd.exe
Lsass.exe
Services.exe
Einlogon.exe
Crss.exe
Smss.exe
System
System idle process SYSTEM
When I click on users, is has nothing.
When I click on new task and type in what you said it tells me that this file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the folder options control panel, but I don't know how to get there.
Whatever I type into the create new task, that is the message that I get or if I click on browse and try to open anything there, same thing.

Ok, try just typing rstrui.exe or c:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

I am hoping I can find an answer here..It all started when i needed to do an Excel sheet in Microsoft Office. It said that there had been a recent change in the application and I needed to reinstall the program from the CD. I can't find the CD so I decided to do a restore to an earlier time hoping it would go back to when Office worked. The restore went back 2 weeks but it still could not open Office so I did another restore going back another 2 weeks. After that my computer starts but only shows the picture that i have for wallpaper. No icons, no taskbar, nothing. The CD Drive does not read CD's, and when I try to start it up in Safe mode it just hangs up with a black screen and Safe mode written in each corner. I can open the task manager and everything I select to open comes back saying it can'f find the application to open it. I don't know what to try next. I can't even get into setup. HELP!
OK I did it and I still get the same answer"it is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."
The command prompt says

C:\Documents and Settings\Terry>

If that helps?

Try Safe mode with VGA graphics instead. Also try every option there is in the F8 boot menu.