Help from anyone who knows how to fix this please

[mycatownsme]

I have somehow managed to put at the very bottom of my screen after the round windows emblem the e for to connect to internet explorer which has been there and good. But then I now have stretched out across the rest of the bottom of the screen the words...Desktop and then it looks like the front of a blue book and then a space and it looks like the front of a folder with the name Public after that, and then I have a picture of a computer with My Computer written out after that and then a space with Network and then a space with the letter e and Then Internet after that. I think these items were together to the left of the bottom of my screen and would like to put them back that way. I tried to do a system restore but that did not work. 
And on the right side I do have the time and my speaker for sound....stuff that has been there and that is ok.
It is just this stuff spread out from the left.
If anyone knows how I can get that back to the way it used to be, I sure would appreciate knowing how to get it back.
I'm using Vista with IE9.
Lin/StevesMom

[mycatownsme]

I'm on an older computer because when I called AT&T my regular computer no longer works unless I mark my router to not run secure. Gee, I really don't care for the technical help there at all. Got some real bad advice like taking out the netgear hookup so this computer could run wireless. They said I did not need it because I had my 2Wire router and did not need 2 of them. It took me an hour to get them to understand why I did need this. And from the start I told them "Do NOT change my password on my modem." Not more then ten minutes into their help after saying that after the first hour, they changed my password. Thankfully I was watching them like a hawk and I clicked to disable the remote window so they could not do any more and changed my password back. They called me on the phone to try to get me to come back to them online but I refused. And all it took to get the stuff from the bottom of my screen off of there was to click on delete and they went away. That is all I needed from them. Now I need to find a good computer place to bring my laptop to in order to get it running right again. Just wanted to update all on how I got that off of there and now what's going on. Here it is Christmas Eve and I'm having computer withdrawal. Well, not completely because I have this older computer running XP but no cheats to use and very slow. But thankful I can still visit here and my other favorite places.
Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas. Hugs, StevesMom/Lin