Windows XP - XP-64 System tray GONE. all of it, not just icons

I cleaned up a bogus anti-virus virus/malware infections, and restored my system from a point 2 weeks before, but now I have no system tray.  NONE at all.

I'm running XP-64, and I don't know how to restore this or know of any utility I can use to correct it.

I do get notifications from programs that are usually resident in the system tray: antivirus (Eset Smart Security), email client, and whatnot, but there is no tray, just a clock, no icons.  The "hide inactive icons" choice is dark in the "start menu/properties" menu, there is no button/arrow to expand the tray, and I cannot change my taskbar at all through any customizations.  The menu will change, from modern to Classic, but the taskbar does not change.  I can "lock" and "unlock" it, move it, make it hide or not be on top all the time, but I cannot change it's appearance.

Now, it gets better...  To work around this, I created a second user with admin rights so I can access all of my docs and programs.  This second user has a system tray, but cannot create the "quick launch" toolbar.   Windows pops up an error box hat states "cannot create quick launch toolbar" when I try to create it by Rt Clicking on taskbar/toolbars/quick launch.

I would REALLY like to clean up these errors, but do not know how.
I suspect that my registry is corrupted just enough to create this pain in my ass, but still allow me enough functionality to keep working. 

I use ESet Smart Security and CacheCleaner to keep things neat, but I do not "muck around" on this machine, as it is my work machine.  Dell Precision T3400, Core2Duo, WinXP64 (2003) with SP2.  OS updates installed weekly.

I would GREATLY appreciate any assistance from the Community.

Do you have the XP CD ? Is so go to start => run and type sfc /scannow (the space after sfc is important). This will run the system file checker which will replace missing or corrupt system files with a good copy. If it can't find a backup of the file on your drive it'll ask you for the XP CD.