Strange UAC-Related Issue

I've experienced this issue a total of 4 times now on my X120e, but never my T500. Both are running Windows 7 64-bit, the X120e running HP and the T500 running Professional.

After booting up, which is perfectly normal (all the startup programs I have do launch normally), no other programs appear when they are launched. Further details:
- Windows components do launch--for example, IE9 launches normally, as does Notepad, Calculator, etc.
- The processes do appear in the Task Manager, however, they only have ~100K memory associated with each of them
- Attempting to launch multiple instances of each of those programs adds further processes, even for those programs that do not allow multiple instances (ie, foobar2000).
- Launching the same programs as an administrator does work, and they appear normally again

The last item is what leads me to believe this is a UAC issue. Rebooting sometimes fixes the issue, but not always.

Someone here seems to be having the same issue, but they were unable to resolve it.

Any help is much appreciated!

 

So, is this a Lenovo x120e issue, or a UAC issue?

 

I'm led to believe this is a UAC issue, as I mentioned in my OP. My reasons for believing that this is the case:
1.- The programs do launch when given administrative privileges
2.- Startup programs do launch properly
3.- Windows components do launch properly

So it's a software issue, and it's a Windows software issue--unrelated to the hardware, although I'm a little perplexed why I've never had the issue on my T500, but have it on my X120e. The only software differences between them are HP v. Professional (should be no real difference) and TPFanControl, which I have on my X120e but not my T500.

 

very odd, makes me think something with your user account / permissions is messed up.

 

The thought brought up by the poster above is worth pursuing: What happens if you create a new standard user account, and try things from there? Ideally, you would just create the new account, but not use it at all, until you see the issue on your regular account. At that point, log out, and log in to the new account, and see if this has the problem, too. Then we'll go from there.

As an aside, it's very strange that programs start from the startup folder. Those should behave in exactly the same way as all the others, since they are started with the same privileges as the ones you start manually. I'm not usually quick with this kind of a suspicion, but some malicious software might be at the bottom of this.

 

It's better to reload the OS if it's a software bug and better to hunt down a solution if it's an incorrect setting. The wrong thing to do is try and troubleshoot bad coding.

 

Create a new user profile,log in to the new user profile, copy the desktop, download folders etc then delete the corrupted user profile.
I would strongly urge users not to use "cleaner" utilities as they are likely to mess up certain stuff if the wrong data is deleted.

 

As an update: I was just about to take weinter's advice, after I finished midterms and got time to tinker with my computer, but interestingly enough, the issue suddenly stopped occurring. I'm not sure what (seemingly) resolved this, but I did install multiple W7 patches.

In any case, the issue now seems to have fixed itself--thanks for chiming in, guys!

 

i've seen similar happenings on random occasion. mostly fixed with a reboot, sometimes with more than one. sometimes (very few times) the os just doesn't "load properly", and results in such strange behaviour. happens about once a year, or so (and not on the same system all the time).

glad it's gone again. lets hope it stays gone.