I applied a Windows Update for IE9 but didn't restart to let the process finish. OS is Vista 64 bit with all the other latest patches already applied. Then my laptop's battery died. The next time it rebooted, it did a chkdisk operation automatically. The operation found some problems that it fixed and it also deleted some index files. Upon completion it booted Windows and I got an error that RealTek NIC driver needed to be re-installed. Windows tried to reinstall it automatically but said the driver file was corrupt. I cannot connect to any wireless network either. It can't find any wireless networks because it says the group or service could not start. I tried System Restore to last month. But after doing the System Restore, it again ran a chkdisk operation automatically and did the same thing in terms of deleting and trying to autofix files. What can I do to fix things?

Doing a System Restore will not correct NTFS errors on your hard drive. The computer will only automatically do a chkdsk on startup if the file system is marked as 'dirty'. The fact that it did a chkdsk again implies that it did not correct the errors last time, and possibly did not correct the errors again when it ran. Have you tried to "roll back" the NIC driver? Run devmgmt.msc, open the NIC properties, choose the Driver tab, and select "Roll back driver"

Thanks Bigteddy. There was no "roll back" option but you pointed me in the right direction. I uninstalled both the Ethernet and the Wireless (Intel) drivers and re-installed them. Fortunately the system automatically found the drivers in the recovery partition. This seems to have fixed the problem partly. Now I can see the wireless networks that are available. But when I try to connect to the network, it fails. First it says connecting to the network is taking too long. Then it says Connection Unsuccessful. Clicking on the network icon in the task bar gives the message "Connection status: unknown The dependency service or group failed to start." When I tried to diagnose the problem it took me to Services. A lot of services are listed there and I don't know which one to concentrate on. Searching the Internet for "connection status unknown" took me to this thread which was a little scary because they said if re-installing the drivers didn't help then TCP/IP is screwed and it can't be corrected in Vista. Is that correct? Anyway, I followed the instructions in that thread to run sfc /scannow and it said found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. So then i did findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log > sfcdetails.txt as suggested in that thread. The resulting file had about 1,000 lines and 10 occurrences of "could not repair member file", These are from 5 different runs of this command and are as follows: 2011-06-09 11:44:53, Info CSI 00000181 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:24{12}]"settings.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Sidebar, Version = 6.0.6002.18005, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch 2011-06-09 11:44:56, Info CSI 00000183 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:24{12}]"settings.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Sidebar, Version = 6.0.6002.18005, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch 2011-06-10 21:55:28, Info CSI 00000181 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:24{12}]"settings.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Sidebar, Version = 6.0.6002.18005, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch 2011-06-10 21:55:31, Info CSI 00000183 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:24{12}]"settings.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Sidebar, Version = 6.0.6002.18005, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch ..and so on. I think they are the same two lines being repeated for every instance of sfc /scannow I must have run so far. I don't know why it's saying AMD64 processor in these logs - I have an Intel processor. Oh and another thing.. about chkdsk. It only runs once. But if I do a system restore, then it runs again (only once, though, after each restore). It doesn't find any problems with files but when it says it's verifying indexes, that's when it deletes index entries. e.g. it deletes: jscript9.dll.mui in index $I30 of file 2566 iedkcs32.dll, iesysprep.dll, ieUnatt.exe, inetcpl.cpl, jscript.dll, licmgr10.dll, mshtml.dll, mshtml.tlb, msrating.dll, mstime.dll, occache.dll, PDMSetup.exe, urlmon.dll, vbscript.dll - all of these in index $I30 of file 2869. Then it says it is recovering orphaned files. And it recovers all these files. After that it restarts and doesn't do chkdsk any more (unless I do a system restore from another restore point).

There doesn't seem to be anything sinister in your SFC results. They all refer to the Sidebar, and that' got nothing to do with this problem (I don't think). I'm glad you have made progress. Please refer to the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299357 This explains how to reset your TCP/IP stack, and even gives you a Mr. Fixit to do it for you.

I tried that fix - both with Fix it and manually with the commands. Neither worked :(

Well ipv4 uninstall and install did not work either. I am going to re-install the operating system. Hopefully that will work.

Yes, I agree, it's what I'd do at this stage.