xp startup error

My computer recently froze up and I had to restart my computer by holding in on the power key. Upon rebooting I now get a pop up stating that windows explorer has encountered an error must close. Upon letting it close the screen refreshes and I will get the error again if I try to access my computer icon on the desktop or most any other action requiring explorer. I tried going into safe mode but get the same error there also. Tried a system restore to the previous day but that did not help. Also windows live messenger also seems to hang at trying to log in and I can only get out of it by going to task manager and ending it there. Internet explorer will not run at all. Mozilla firefox will. I am running an oem version of xp home.

Any help would be much appreciated