Strange problems with Vista, can you help me diagnose?

Vista started acting strangely a couple of weeks ago. Virus and spyware scans are clean, and I haven't installed any new software recently. Here are the issues:

Can't shut down or restart normally. Vista hangs while displaying "Shutting Down" screen. Must depress power button for 4 seconds to shut down manually.

Networking unstable. Switching from wifi (home) to wired LAN (work) requires shutdown, boot to safe mode, shutdown again, and restart.

Can't access task manager. When pressing ctrl+shift+esc the icon appears in system tray, but I clicking it does nothing.

Opera acting funny. Bookmarks get re-ordered, homepage gets reset to Opera default.

Sidebar takes forever to load on startup.


There are probably some others I forgot. I tried a system resotre to two weeks ago, which fixed some of the issues. For example, I could access task manager. But once it ran the auto update of windows files the problems recurred. I'm out of ideas here, can anyone help?

 

First, what version of Vista are you using? Launch winver and give us a screenshot.

Grab your Vista DVD and boot from that. Then run chkdsk and sfc /scannow on the OS volume. Report any errors.

If you don't see any errors, look through your system logs, try and see if you get any errors during shutdown, or when launching the Task Manager.

 

The minimized task manager sure sounds virs related.

Have you tried a system restore to before the issue occured?

Some of the other problems seem like a fouled register, perhaps due to file system corrptiong (Relativity17's chkdsk suggestion should address that)

What happens if you use MSCONFIG to shut down all start programs and non-ms services?

Press START, type MSCONFIG in the search box, press ENTER. Go to SERVICES tab, check HIDE ALL MICROSOFT SERVICES, uncheck what remains, go to STARTUP and click DISABLE ALL.

Your shutdown speed will still be slow until the NEXT shut down

Does that make a difference?

 

Depending on what else you have on the system partition, a clean reinstallation from your recovery media/partition might be the quickest/simplest answer.

 

- Remove any updates that you installed on the machine recently
- Reinstall the video and network drivers with up-to-date versions from the manufacturer's website
- check the system logs for any more info on the errors. Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer
- If all else fails, Shyster's recommendation may be worth considering, since you do want to save your time.

 

LOL! This is my favourite thing to do while my system goes crazy.
Simple, fast, effective, easy and reliable.

 

I don't like doing that as a "fix" to a problem - it irritates me from a philosophical perspective - but I've done it myself several times when my OS installation has become totally botched, either because of something I did, or because of the consequences of a dying hard drive.

 

Of course, if we can fix it manually then it is the BEST, a reinstallation of windows could be avoided. If we can't and the problem is too complicated, a reinstallation of OS is reasonable.

 

This definitely isn't a compliment of how easy it is to repair Microsoft's operating systems.

 

LOL yea. But it helps me bunch of times.
However, a re-installation of OS would buy some time. After that, we need to install and tweak everything again. T.T
That's why if the problems is small and easily solve I won't go for that.
But if the problems are complicated and too much, then a re-installation of OS would considered reasonable and easier than catching each errors and fix them manually.

 

Removing and re-installing network drivers solved the problems. Thank you.