losing my icons

i recently restored my original settings using the recovery disks because my system went haywire with popups, etc.  i spent 4 hours with a dell cust. serv. rep and when we were done everything was fine.  i bought a new keyboard and went to install it.  when i shut down and restarted, my personal settings were all gone.  no icons nothing.  i can access the internet and ms office through task manager if i do alt/contr/del.  but i cannot create a shortcut that will move to the desktop....there is no start button, no menu bar. 

 

do i need to run the recovery again?  or is there another solution?

 

please help