Why is my start menu, task bar, and icons dissapearing after I open anything?

This sounds like it's caused by some kind of malware (virus, trojan, that kind of stuff). Sometimes you can get rid of it with an antivirus program. This is what I'd try first. I recommend Avira AntiVir because in both formal and my (informal) tests it seems to have performed the best out of free antivirus programs, and is really easy to use. If that doesn't work, though, and it might not, you will have to reformat your hard drive. To do this, you need to find the Windows CD-ROMs that came with your computer when you bought it. Go on your computer and back up all the files you want to keep to a separate drive (flash/thumb drives work well for this). This means documents, your favorites folder for your web browser, anything you want that wasn't there when you bought the computer. Scan it all once it's on the new drive. Then, use the CD to reinstall the operating system and reformat. This takes a long time, and all the files that were on your hard drive will be lost. That's why you backed up, so that you can later restore them.