I am using Win XP Pro, SP3 and IE7. Recently, a few things has changed on its own as follows:

1) On the Quick LLaunch bar, the My Desktop Icon that is usually there when IE is installed has disappeared.
2) when I add a website to my Favourites, sometimes it says someting to the effect that the Shortcut does not exist or has been maved and asked me to make sure that the link is correct or something like that. At other times, it created 2 shortcuts on the Favourites, one that says the error message I just mentioned and the other works.
3) sometimes when I clcik on a link, a Blank Page shows up and I have to close the blank page and reclick on the webpage before it directs me to the site.

All these 3 things has never happened before till recently. I have not installed any new programs short of installing Windows Update patchs which is set to do this automatically.

Does anyone esle has the same problem or know what is causing these or similar errors and how to resolve these ? Many thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.