cannot open control panel, cannot click user profile pic

i just bought a new HD (200gb hitachi), did a clean install of vista home premium, installed all the drivers, and now i'm tweaking vista. however, everytime i attempt to open the control panel, it flashes the window, but nothing opens. i also cannot click my profile picture in the start menu. i feel like smashing the middle of my laptop, but i'm trying really hard not to.

can anyone please, quickly, assist me before i break my computer.

 

wow, it just opened after the like the fifth restart. oiasmfdfosaofdisaoifdmsaoifd.


EDIT: i just restarted again, and now it doesn't open.

 

Here are some things to try:

1, Check software licensing: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=787725
2. Disable Windows Firewall.
3. Look for updated video card/sound card drivers. Sometimes a bad driver can cause this issue.

 

i went into the services and saw that the SLUNotify service wasn't even started. so i get it to automatic instead of manual and started it, then recycled the software licensing service, and the control panel worked again. i'm currently installing updates, so i haven't restarted my computer yet to see if the control panel still comes up.

also, i'm running the 174.74 nvidia drivers from laptopvideo2go. i had these running on my other HD and i never ran into any issue like this.

 

What tweaks did you do?

Oh yeah, you might want to try using System Restore.

 

I don't think that's necessary. Once SL was set to automatic, the problem stopped.