Virus or Spyware? Something messed up the programs links. Can you help?

[MaxDepth]

Folks have a HP laptop, WinXP Home.

They can't tell me what they have done but...

Everything in the menu is a LNK picture (I am guessing the file has been removed?) I cannot access the utilities, I cannot access system restore, and I cannot access the task manager. I have no real experience with XP Home. My expertise comes with NT and 2000. Also, when either parent logs in, there is an error statement that says it cannot use Paint to open of the files. If you need this error statement, I will restart the laptop and copy it to a post.

I am googling the symptoms but having limited success.

Thanks.

 

[MaxDepth]

Every normal link I try to open, I get the Paint Error dialog,

"C:\.... (file path of link here)
Paint cannot read this file.
This is not a valid bitmap file, or its format is not currently supported."