Vista Wierdness...

[Khrymsyn]

Hey Gang,

I've got a really bizarre problem that doesn't seem to be heavily affecting me, but it just bugs me that I can't figure it out.

I'm running Vista64... and for the most part, it works fine. No unusual crashes (heck, even Fallout3 is pretty stable), plays games, gets on the web, etc, etc, etc...

However, there are cetain things it won't seem to do... and when trying them, they just flash a blank screen for a split second, and close themselves out :
- System Properties by Right Clicking the My Computer Icon (it does work when I run directly from the CPL file however...)
- Right clicking desktop to hit "personalize"
- Speech Recognition icon in Control Panel
- Windows update in Control Panel (or anywhere else for that matter)
- Power Options in control panel
- Double clicking a ZIP file

In the case of the control Panel icons, I can right click and choose "explore" and it goes to a Desktop entry that's blank... and I can extract ZIP files with no problem, and it appears that Windows Update is running fine as I still get the icon for it and still occasionally get notified that updates are being installed on shutdown.

I've tested as different users (admins and non-admins) I've tried the sfc /scannow... I've uninstalled-reinstalled virus scanner (AVG8.0) and scanned before and after, ran Hijack This and didn't see anything odd, and have also run both windows defender and Spybot S&D. Nothing odd shows in event logs...and I can't tell you anything I may have changed since this started because I don't know when it started. I've been working on this a couple of days now, and everything tells me my machine is fine (and during normal usage, I wouldn't notice the problem, but it still persists in safe mode!), but since I have noticed it... it's buggin me.

There's got to be some sort of common thread between these apps but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!

[muddi900]

Aren't winRAR and 7zip Vista compatible? I, myself, have never used vista, but those 2 software present a superior alternative to any native windows solution to your zip problem.

[mesh]

Haven't disabled any services that didn't "seem" to do anything useful recently? such as the rpc endpoint and such?

[Khrymsyn]

Aren't winRAR and 7zip Vista compatible? I, myself, have never used vista, but those 2 software present a superior alternative to any native windows solution to your zip problem.

Hey Muddi, I appreciate the suggestion. The problem isn't getting things to unzip, that works fine either through the built in Vista unzip or through 7zip. I sometimes prefer to browse zip files as folders though (such as when my sister sends me some of her artwork to check out). I really think it's related to the other problems.

Haven't disabled any services that didn't "seem" to do anything useful recently? such as the rpc endpoint and such?

I've been trying to figure out if that's the case as that was my thought too, but I can't see anything "obvious" that I might have disabled, and I certainly haven't tweaked anything in quite some time.

[Goronmon]

Reformat sounds like the best solution to me as those seem like very atypical problems to run into.

[muddi900]

Hey Muddi, I appreciate the suggestion. The problem isn't getting things to unzip, that works fine either through the built in Vista unzip or through 7zip. I sometimes prefer to browse zip files as folders though (such as when my sister sends me some of her artwork to check out). I really think it's related to the other problems.

Winrar allows you to explore zip files, without extracting them, and so did Winzip. I assumed 7zip would too...

*shrug*

[Khrymsyn]

Hey muddi! sorry for not responding. It's a different type of explore. With Vista Zip functionality, I can browse inside a zip file and launch files from within the zip without doing any extracting.

That being said...


WE'RE FIXED!!!!!

Thanks everyone for responding.

I still do not know what the root cause of the problem was, but I decided to download a copy of SP1 from MS directly instead of through windows update (which as I mentioned, I couldn't access), and after SP1 installed and booted, everything began working hunky dory again!! WOOT!!

Thanks all for the help and advice!

[Rogue_hunter]

I still do not know what the root cause of the problem was, but I decided to download a copy of SP1 from MS directly instead of through windows update (which as I mentioned, I couldn't access), and after SP1 installed and booted, everything began working hunky dory again!! WOOT!!

Thanks all for the help and advice!

Wait? You WEREN'T running Vista with SP1? No wonder. They're called Service Packs for a reason. And launch Vista was fairly unstable/hard to work with. SP1 made Vista usable.

[Khrymsyn]

Wait? You WEREN'T running Vista with SP1? No wonder. They're called Service Packs for a reason. And launch Vista was fairly unstable/hard to work with. SP1 made Vista usable.

I think it was more a lack of running SP1 due to inattention that due to desire.
I had already thought I was running SP1, but due to my odd problem, have been unable to check as I couldn't even check computer properties to see the ver.

Live and learn I guess.