Can't Get System Past Desktop Page

I am running my computer with windows XP. I cannot get it to get past the main page (desktop) when I go down to the task bar where it says START i get an hour glass. I cannot click on any of my desk top Icons and have them do anything and I cannot go into the start menu. I have tried control, shift, escape to see if I can run off a cd this could be of help if a cd is needed to fix the problem. I did try to boot the computer off of a disk thinking perhaps I had a virus (I still think that might be the problem) but I was unable to do this. I reset the boot to start from disk and when it started in dos and gave me my 4 choices I chose boot from disk then it said press f1 or f2 to continue. I pressed F1. when I had the Norton anti-virus disk in there it gave me the choice for normal startup or start up from disk. I tried to choose start up from disk but it wouldn't let me. I tried this several times with 2 different versions all with the same result. My 30 seconds ran out and it started up normally and then got stuck on the desk top page. I tried the same boot with the windows XP disk hoping that it might have a diagnostic bit to it, but no luck I chose boot form disk and it still went to the desk top page and got stuck.

Anyone with any information or suggestions on what I might do would be greatly appreciated. I would hate to think that I will have to take it in somewhere only to have them wipe my drive. I have e-mails on there that are very precious to me and if for nothing else I would like to keep those besides have a computer I can use!! I do have some sense as to how things work even though I don't always understand how it happens or what I actually did. So, if you could explain in not too techie language I should be able to get it!