*** UPDATE ***
Turn out I had viruses on my computer.
My toolbar could not load completely, so I was unable to access my "Start"
menus.
Fortunately, I had a Windows Explorer shortcut on my desktop. I went into
"Control Panel" and re-installed some windows components. That gave me
internet access and I downloaded a free Anti-Virus program (Avast 4).
The software found 33 files containing viruses on my computer.
The most frustrating is that my WinPatrol program was infected by a Trojan,
so it I guess it wasn't helping much. I also re-installed a newer version of
WinPatrol. It's a great little program.
NOTE: Scanning my hard drive for viruses took nearly 3 hours. Yeah that's
slow. I should've tried custom install and perhaps tried to configure the
software not to scan certain file types. Most viruses were in the
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory.