Windows XP Boot Issue

I am having issues with booting my PC running Windows XP Home. I had just installed a new router, since my older one had issues with connection drops. It was installed without issue, wired into a PC, and was broadcasting the signal to one laptop and one PC.

The PC that was receiving this wireless signal was started, but refused to fully boot. I could view the desktop and icons, but couldn't interact with them. I can start Task Manager, and so I have stripped down the boot to bare minimums, using the "clean boot" technique. No luck there.

I've been tinkering around with it, and I believe it is an issue with explorer.exe. If I terminate explorer.exe as a process, and then run it using the run command in the task manager, it will function properly for about five seconds, before freezing as previously. I have no idea what triggered this. It would seem unlikely to me that it has anything to do with the router, since I wasn't actually able to configure it on that computer: the reason I booted it up was to do precisely that. The computer had functioned, without problems, not one hour earlier.

I wanted to know what options I have, besides those operations involving a Windows XP Home CD. It would seem that mine has been misplaced.