Laptop issues

I have a dell notebook never had problems until I downloaded AVG and adobe reader now I can't Acess anything at all!   It turns on I can log on   All of the shortcuts are still there but I am unable to open them. It's the same with the start up icon I can get to the list of items that are there but it won't open which means I can't go into the reset program to reset to a early time. It acts like it wants to open but that circle just keeps going around and around. Help I don't know what to do at this point.