Many programs (including windows explorer) refusing to load
I spent most of yesterday reshuffling files and folders, running scans, defragging - basically giving my laptop a spring-clean. Now, lots of programs absolutely refuse to load unless I right-click and choose "run as administrator"; the affected programs seem arbitrary. The programs affected (adobe reader, process explorer, utorrent, avast! antivirus, among others) appear in the task manager under "processes", even stacking when I try to run them multiple times, but none appear in the "applications" category. Even the "explorer" icon that I had in my taskbar wouldn't load! I could access my libraries through the start menu, or by using direct shortcuts (my documents, etc), but nothing on the desktop/taskbar would work. The affected programs refuse to load from the desktop, taskbar, start menu, even when I choose the application directly from the "program files" folder. A possibly related issue was that my microsoft office 2007 installation vanished entirely, for no apparent reason! Whenever I tried to open a file an installer opened. I eventually let the installer run, and my office 2007 installation recovered itself, but I have no recollection of deleting the folder from my program files. Curiously, all the shortcuts were still present in my start menu when I was getting the "install" popup. Some of the programs I used to run scans/checks/etc include Advanced SystemCare 3, avast! antivirus, malwarebytes anti-malware and windows defender. I am running Windows 7 Home edition, as the sole user. The only other thing I can think of that may have had an affect was that I added several programs to my start menu manually, by adding extra folders and shortcuts to the "start menu" folder. This is very frustrating, I would appreciate any and all help.
December 27th, 2010 5:32pm

Try a system restore [1][2] to a point where your Windows worked. André [1] System Restore - Windows 7 features - Microsoft Windows [2] What is System Restore ?"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/
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December 27th, 2010 6:36pm

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