Vista Control Panel

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Although Vista's been out for quite a while, I'm sad to say I'm still a noob.

 

I'm trying to help my mother-in-law w/ a little issue on her laptop.** I can't get Control Panel to open.* I can access individual items by browsing the Control Panel tree in Windows Explorer.

 

What I've tried so far...

 

1) Starting and stopping the Software Licensing service.* That seems to fix the issue for a lot of people.* Didn't help in this case.

2) Removing non-Microsoft *.cpl files from System32.* Didn't help.

3) Installing a hotfix which many people claimed fixed the issue for them.* Didn't help.

4) Uninstalling the ATI graphics drivers.* Also reinstalled.* Didnt' help.

5) Starting in Safe Mode, Control Panel opens fine.* However, I don't have any idea how to determine which specific driver, service or executable is causing the problem.

 

Other info...

1) When I get to the Personalize panel manually, the Mouse Pointers link appears to do nothing when I click it.

2) From Programs and Features, clicking the task "View Installed Updates" does nothing.

3) Performance and reliability montitor is virtually clean except for a few Firefox crashes and one Outlook crash.

 

Unfortunately, mother-in-law has no recollection of when the problem started.* Here's what's been installed on the system:

 

ATI Catalyst Install Manager

Syunaptics Pointing Device Driver

Applie Mobile Device Support

Apple Software Update

iTunes

Quicktime

Adobe Flash Player Plugin

Mozilla Firefox

MSXML 4.0 SP2 (KB941833)

pdfFactory

MSXML 4.0 SP2 (KB936181)

HP Update

HPSSupply

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Hotfix (KB929729)

avast! Antivirus

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007

MSXML 4.0 Parser and SDK

QuickBooks Pro 2007

QuickBookx Product Listing Service

Skype 3.2

Skype add-on for IE

SupportSoft Assisted Service

Activation Assistant for the 2007 Microsoft Office suite

Adobe Flash Player 9 ActiveX

Adobe Showckwave Player

ALPS Touch Pad Driver

Atheros Driver Installation Program

Camera Assistant Software for Toshiba

CD/DVD Drive Acoustic Silencer

Desktop Dialer

DVD MovieFactory for TOSHIBA

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable

oggcodecs 0.71.0946

TOSHIBA Assist

TOSHIBA Speech System Applications

TOSHIBA Speech System SR Engine

TOSHIBA Speech System TTS Engine

Microsoft Works

Adobe Reader 8

Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba

Java SE Runtime Environement 6

MSXML 4.0 SP2 (KB927978)

Napster

Realtek 8169 PCI, 8168 and 8101E PCIe Ethernet Network Card Driver for Windows...

Realtek High Definition Audio Driver

Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515/xx12 drivers

TOSHIBA ConfigFree

TOSHIBA Disc Creator

TOSHIBA DVD PLAYER

TOSHIBA Extended Tiles for Windows Mobility Center

TOSHIBA Flash Cards Support Utility

TOSHIBA Hardware Setup

TOSHIBA Music

Toshiba Registration

TOSHIBA SD Memory Utilities

TOSHIBA Software Modem

TOSHIBA Software Upgrades

TOSHIBA Supervisor Password

TOSHIBA Value Added Package

Windows Media Encoder 9 Series

 

 

 

EDIT: I looked through the Event Viewer as well, but I'm not certain that a non-opening Control Panel will log anything.

 

 

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