I guess the question is "When does the explorer shell start running?". Are you running XP with SP2? I think there was some sort of bug after SP2 where you have to run the installer, then logoff, then log back on and run setshell.exe to set the shell to LS again, and *then* reboot in order to get it to stick. Anybody have the link to that post?

Edit: Here's some info at ls-universe.info:

http://www.ls-universe.info/plugins/faq/faq.php?0.cat.4.6