After windows explorer crashing the other day i havent had a taskbar and i have no idea how to get it back!

this is not the usual "end task explorer and it goes away" kinda deal, i still have a start button, a quick launch bar,a system tray and a custom tool bar for all my drives, just no where for me to click to bring up previous windows/apps etc instead i have to use ALT + TAB to switch between them.

this is extremely annoying considering i like to use mouse only operation most of the time so im hoping someone in here might have some idea on how i can fix this short of re-installing windows.

i have tried:

restarting - no better

end task explorer and then new task explorer - no better

removing my quicklaunch and custom drive toolbar - worse, i now have no bar at the bottom of my page at all, theres a little blue line that you would expect to see if you had your bar on hide but this line cant be dragged up.

moving the bar to another part of the screen - docked left, right and top and still no better.

changing the theme xp uses - only switched between xp theme and windows classic them but still no better.

i cant remember if ive tried anything else but i feel ive tried all i can think of and its annoying the crap outa me.

i think im running winXP home, athlonXP 2800+, 768mb ddr 400 ram, 40gig system drive, 120gig storage drive, fx5200 videocard.

so yea not a new system but its the one i use to surf the net, download torrents and watch movies on the LCD tv so would be good if someone can help out