The Quick Launch toolbar on the Windows XP taskbar stopped appearing after restart. Icons for the toolbar were still available in the normal location: %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch. However, the toolbar would be gone and the icon order was reset.
Apparently, this can come up with certain malware. However, in my case, the "Group Policy" profile became corrupted. I followed the fix here (even though I don't understand the symptoms described in the page): ESENT event IDs 1000, 1202, 412, and 454 are logged repeatedly in the Application log to rebuild the profile. You may not have this problem if you can successfully open the Group Policy Editor in Administrative Tools.
I also adjusted the registry value NoSaveSettings, as explained here: Microsoft TechNet: NoSaveSettings
Restarting after adjusting this value makes it so that your desktop settings are saved. You then have to restart again after re-introducing the Quick Launch toolbar to see if it was fixed. It is possible that this latter adjustment is all that is required.
