Windows XP - no taskbar, can not drag and drop, cant connect to internet, cant backup

Please help.  My laptop starts very slowly, and when it does, there is never a start menu.  I can not drag and drop any items anywhere on the whole computer.  I tried pressing ctrl + alt + del and doing file run on the system backups or recovery's or anything but it kept saying please restart your computer and try again.  when i restart and try again, it gives me the same message.  i started in safe mode and tried again and it still didnt work.  the only thing i can think of doing is reformatting the computer but the computer did not come with a copy of the windows.

Try these other steps -
Consider upgrading your hardware if you have very less space on the hard disk or not RAM
Delete programs you never use
Limit how many programs load at startup
Disable services you don’t need - see possible list of Services to disable - 
http://mvark.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-tune-your-windows-pc.html

it would be nice if i was able to do anything like i said in my last post.  nothing runs at all, if i go to start, run, and type in msconfig, nothing happens.  i just reformatted it and now its working fine, just wanted to save some stuff from it but too late for that, thanks for the help.