control panel won't open

For some reason, my control panel won't open...

I think it was after the day I installed the nvidia laptop driver from the nvidia site.

can anyone please help me fix this problem?

thank you!

 

Your Windows Control Panel or Nvidia Control Panel?

My Nvidia Control Panel wasn't working... I did a full removal of Nvidia drivers (theres a thread or sticky in the Gateway forum) and reinstall of updated Nvidia drivers.

Windows Control Panel, could be something more serious...

 

windows control panel...

when i click it from the start menu, it says

windows experlor has encountered an error, and it it restarts...

it won't open at all..

 

One of 2 things:
1. You didn't activate your copy of Vista, it will lock you out of the control panel, turn the scheme to basic and restrict what you can do. Not very likely though considering most time activation is automatic, but I did have one friend that it happened to and that is the only reason I'm mentioning it.

2. You have a virus/worm/Trojan that is protecting itself. If its this deep and has that much control, you are pretty much f***ed. Back up what you can, scan that data and reinstall windows. There are ways to fix windows, but they are a pain and anything that can do that to windows, is d*** resilient.

Other more disturbing is a windows corruption or a hardware corruption that then corrupts Windows. If its windows based, reinstall should fix it, if its hardware based there is a strong likely hood that it will come back. My bet is on the infection.

 

so i have to reformat??????????!!!!

****!!!!

 

Being as constructive as I possibly be, your so screwed.

Have you tried going into save mode? Press F8 after the Post screen and before the Windows loading screen. See if you can do anything from there.