No Task Bar nor Desktop Icons in normal or Safe Mode

Looking for assistance to resolve problem with my son's
Compaq.

He says system was running slow so he did CTRL-Alt-Del to
see what was running. Task Mgr showed a weird item (tilde
with "some symbols" on same line) so he did another
CTRL-Alt-Del to restart.

Restart looked normal through the splash screen portion but
then it stopped with the Wallpaper displayed without any
desktop icons nor Task Bar. He did CTRL-Alt-Del and there
was nothing/nothing running in the Task Mgr.

He then went to the Safe Mode and it only shows the words
Safe Mode in the corners of screen but there are no Desktop
Icons nor Task Bar.

Can anyone help given this limited, second hand information?
Thank you.

Job says, "Statistics show that shortly after an increase in
the sales of computers there is an increase in the sales of
hammers."