Explorer Causing Errors - Computer Freezing

My computer has recently been freezing quite a bit. I have re-installed the op sys win2k prof. and it still does this. I have learned to live with the freezing not a big deal i just re-start often. Anyway today it really started acting up. I get to the login screen type in my password and it loads the desktop but before i can click on anything it gives me an error message saying that explorer has caused an error and will be closed and must be re-started, then it says generating error log. At this point i click ok and there is nothing on the desktop and there is no start bar. The only button combo that works is ctrl alt del. I have tried to boot into safe mode and it does the same thing. Today i had just finished installing new updates from microsoft and it froze right after doing this so i just had to do a hard re-start could this have screwed up the op sys??