I have never had a problem like this before and it just started this morning. It is driving me nuts! About half my programs (all the ones I need to use right now), will launch and then immediately close. My browser will run and I can get Outlook to launch OK; however, Word, Excel, etc. launch, then hang for awhile then start working normally. I ran antivirus (Avast), Spybot S&D and Supersantispyware. They launched and ran fine and none found any errors. Most of my other apps either do nothing when I click the icon or try to run the .exe, or they launch briefly and then close immediately. When I go into the Control Panel, I cannot uninstall anything. I click uninstall and nothing happens. I can uninstall apps through CCleaner. Also in Control panel, the small blue links for shortcuts to functions under a category do not work, but, the large green category names open the control panel category when clicked. I have also run sfc /scannow, Window Repair, System Restore to 5 days ago, etc. Nothing works to solve the issue. I cannot reinstall the programs because, even from the CD/DVD, the setup.exe will either not run or, because some are Flash programs, I get the Flash menu then I click install and nothing launches. Help!!! I am dead in the water right now.
It sounds like you have massive registry corruption dude! Do you have any registry cleaners that you use regularly? If so does it make backups of the registry prior to cleaning it? If so try restoring the registry back to the day everything was working properly.
I have not used any registry cleaners. Shouldn't system restore also restore the registry? Everything was fine a few days ago, but, a system restore did nothing.
To be honest if i had that much trouble i would try and backup documents e.c.t if possible and format and reinstall.
OK, I tried TuneUp Utilities 2010. It installs, but, as with everything else, it won't launch. All my Adobe apps run fine (Photoshop, Illustrator, FrameMaker, Acrobat Pro) as well as some others. My FTP and video editing programs won't launch or reinstall. Nothing related to the Win 7 OS wants to run at all (Media Player, any program launched from Control Panel and the Office apps are hit and miss. Any other suggestions short of reinstalling Windows? I could try recovery from my last Acronis True Image backup, but, that is three weeks old (I know, must backup more often!!!).
Nope, never used those programs. I did run malwarebytes and it found nothing. I am backing up my docs, pics. videos and other data right now (hey, at least True Image 2010 will run!). I'll do an image restore to my system from the last full backup three weeks ago and copy the new files backup on top of that. If all else fails, it's a reformat and reinstall of the OS and apps :-( I have never seen or heard of this problem before. Everything was fine last night when I shut down and the problems started as soon as I booted up this morning.
Sounds like a plan but it could have been that whatever caused your issue could have been in the computer awhile so if you have this same thing happen again, then delete your backup and reinstall the clean method. The reason I am saying this is because if it was a virus or something like that and you backed it up with the virus or whatever then you will restore the problem.
@ hoopster, if possible i would run acronis from it's bootable cd maybe safer in case it stops running just like other programs.
I am running the Acronis restore right now. I'll let you know how it goes. Running from Windows (should have done bootable CD I suppose); so far, so good. It's restoring my OS partition right now with Data partition and Apps partition to follow.
I'd run memtest to, maybe it's a problem with your ram. A while ago one of my ram modules was corrupted and still most things ran fine, somethimes something slightely weird happened but not to say something was broken. But after a while every time I checked a file with hashcalc the hashes were different, and not to long after that the startmenu got somehow replaced by internet explorer's back and forward buttons and a textbox. That was the first time I thought about ram corruption, cause before that nothing really strange happened... So just check it to be shure.
Still messed up after Acronis restore! Restoring from Acronis image fixed nothing! The same applications launch that launched before the restore and the same ones fail to launch. I know for a fact these apps were working at the time I made the backup. Since this was a sector-by-sector re-image of the hard drive, could I have bad hard drive sectors on my apps and OS partitions? I ran the Windows 7 mem tests this morning and all RAM passed. I'll try memtest.
Chkdsk on all drive partitions returned 0 bad sectors. I am running Memtest86+ v. 4.1 (the latest) from a bootable CD now. 20% in and all is well. This is the strangest problem I have ever experienced. Apps launch fine one day and the next day they don't :-(
Memtest86+ tests all passed. No problems were reported in any of the 4x2GB G.Skill RAM modules. So, RAM is good, disks are good, complete image restore of three disk partitions (OS, Data, Apps) did not solve the problem, sfc /scannow found nothing, antivirus and antispyware checks came up clean. I could reformat and reinstall, but, I am not really confident that will solve it given all the above dead ends. Any other ideas?
Its acting like Windows has decided its a bogus copy. Next thing to croak will be keyboard. Are you getting any messages? Hazar might fix it.