Press Record.

It's pretty rare that I manage to smash up Windows to the point of no-icon sadness.
Let me save you some Google time. Forget the seedy copies od DLL sites franticly downloaded on the net. Just run System Restore from the task manager.

This works under the following strange but crippling conditions.

1. No access to IE/Firefox/Opera or any messengers (crushing I know)
2. No ability to mount new drives (read memory stick)
3. No ability to FTP files (tried that too)
4. Cannot run explore.exe
5. Safe mode displays the same error and lack of functionality

Dont even ask me how I pulled this off but it was a pretty glorious moment of frustration.

Fixed by rolling back to a previous System Restore setting. How did I get to system restore without any icons?
1. Press Control + Alt + Delete
2. click "Task manager"
3. File -> New Task (Run...)
4. Press the Browse button to the bottom right
5. click through the directories until you find c:\WINDOWS\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe
6. Run this file and ignore the errors, it should open fine, given the issue most people will be browsing here for.

7. Restore to the last point before you went crazy and decided to "try" something.

8. Hack it up again

file location from: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_restore.htm
I'm going to load this with the specific search terms I thought were logical, but returned lame responses. Feel free to stop reading here.
missing normaliz.dll, windows error, internetexplorer7, IE7, IE 7, internet explorer, activation, genuine, unable to start, loading windows, trouble