Virus is gone, so is the desktop

I was removing a virus from a friend's computer which was a pain since almost no tools I have run in a 64 bit environment. But anyway, I got it completely disinfected but there must still be a bad registry entry somewhere or something because every time I log in, the desktop icons are all hidden. The virus was apparently that one that hides them on purpose. If I right click on the desktop and do view or whatever then uncheck "show desktop icons" then right click again and re-check it, they all show back up but every time I restart the computer, they're gone again. It's really annoying! So does anyone know where to reset that? I've heard making a new user account will handle it but I don't really want to do that. This is Vista Premium 64 bit Sp2 btw.