Having all kinds of problems... please help

Hey everyone, I'm using Vista to start off with. I'm currently connected wirelessly, but in the right corner where it should show a blue bubble to show that I'm connected to the internet, it just has a red X. I try to right/left click it, nothing happens. So I went to Start -> Network and it will open up but just display a white page windows explorer page. Nothing on it.

I tried using system restore and it went back to normal for a few hours, now it's like this again...

I also noticed my AIM stopped working, so I had to reinstall that...

And now I noticed I can't access my music files I get: "Windows Media Player cannot access the file. The file might be in use or you might not have access to the computer where your file is stored, or your proxy settings may be incorrect."

What is going on???

I ran ad-aware, spyboy s&d, disk cleaner, auslogics disk defrag, avg anti-virus, a-squared, ccleaner & registry cleaner...

I really don't want to reformat, nor do I have the time. And I've never done it before...

 

I finally just got into my network.. and it says "server execution failed" ...?

 

Anyone...?

 

I read something earlier about AIM 6.5 not allowing access to music files. Try uninstalling that and see what happens.

 

Here's the post about AIM 6.5.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2634039&postcount=4

 

Oh wow, that completely fixed everything. What a botched update of AIM. I remember I updated it this morning before everything started happening. I didn't think an UPDATE would cause my computer to completely malfunction.

I do need AIM though... is there a way I can get the non-updated version?

 

Thank you, Hiker. I really appreciate the help and the links. Repped.

 

Here's 5.9

http://www.aim.com/get_aim/win/other_win.adp

 

No problem. Best of luck.

Edit: I deleted the post before with the ftp site and replaced it with the AIM 5.9 download.

 

I'd suggest getting Aim Ad Hack from softpedia.com. It gives the newest version without all the crap.

 

might also want to consider system restore points before installing new apps/softwares. It would make it easier to go back to a previous working environment

cheers ...

 

I did, but now that I think about it this is what happened:

I installed the AIM 6.5 update, I left the computer for awhile. I came back, everything was completely hosed up so I used system restore.

Since system restore doesn't change files/documents, the new AIM upgrade was still in place of the old AIM, but it was uninstalled. (At this point in time I didn't think AIM caused the previous issues) So I try to get on aim after my system restore, it fails, I uninstall it and then reinstall AIM 6.5 (the upgraded version) from the website. Everything is haywire again.

Certain things like music not working, windows explorer not working, networks not working, etc. don't appear right away, so I didn't really think AIM was the culprit. I actually thought I had a virus, or I messed up the registry with CCleaner.

Turns out a small little update, for a chat program, can do major damage to a system, lol.