Currently, my laptop is a complete failure. There's 2 main problems.

1. - Whenever i turn it on, it boots up as normal, but when it comes to displaying my desktop, it doesnt. It shows my desktop background, but no taskbar, icons or anything. I've tried to get on the Task Manager to run explorer.exe, but i just get a black screen when i press ctrl+alt+del.
However, i did a simple test - I switched the laptop off and rebooted it with an external monitor connected, and to my surprise the desktop showed up on the laptop, but the external monitor went black once the desktop showed up. I've checked the display settings on the laptop and they're all as they should be, set to default monitor at the default resolution.

2. Laptop wont run without mains, meaning its basically running like it has no battery. Even though this seemed to have happened instantly, it wasnt a gradual reduction in battery life, it just died out-right.

Anyone got ideas please?