BleepingComputer.com: Windows xp start up error

Hi, everyone. I have a mac, but we have a PC in our house for the family. Windows Xp Media Edition.
Here's what happened. The computer started up normally, gets to the log in page and when I click on the administrator account, this message appears:

"This application has failed to start because Browseui.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem"

I click ok (only option) Gets to the desktop but the start menu and all icons are missing.

I've tried several attempts to fix this problem.
Before #2, the error message was that "Browseui.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against you installation diskette." but changed to the above message after I tried #2.

1. I did a system recovery since I didn't know what else to do. It seemed to fix the problem, but when the pc was restarted again the next day, the same message pops up.

2. Next I brought up the task manager, opened up firefox, and downloaded browseui.dll and used winrar to unzip it to windows/system32 and replaced the old one with the new one.

3. I attempted to do a system restore from a website I found, but the instructions were a bit too confusing.

Can anyone help?
Thanks in advance.

Do you know what version of Internet Explorer you have on the computer?