Explorer Bucking Froken

Hey guys, windows is wonderful:

1. Explorer boots up frozen.
2. Restarted, quicklaunch and toolbar works, but clicking on the desktop or
   start menu freezes it again (as does <Windows-key>-R).
3. Task Manager works, allows me to run programs.
4. Went to M$'s site, downloaded updates, rebooted, still broken.

Running Windows XP SP2 on HP Pavilion zd7010 laptop (the one with a numeric
keypad).  Last thing I did was turn it off by holding power because it failed
to wake up from sleep state (oops?).

Help?

hehe, windows is cool because no one knows what to do except "reinstall".

p.s. I'm using litestep.. it's got issues with my dual screen setup, but at least it's stable.