Win95 “POST”s but nothing after…

One of my users decided to remove an app from his Win95 Compaq laptop file by file. In the process I believe he removed a critical file. Upon starting the laptop goes through normal loading of the OS, POSTs, then the Win95 window screen appears. Next should be the desktop icons appearing but it never gets there, it simply sits and apparently searches for the file. The CDROM or the Floppy drive are both recognized in the BIOS (depending on which I have inserted). I don’t have a recovery disk, can I download one from microsoft?