[jrshankill]

Hi all.
I just joined these forums and Im hoping on sticking around. I've been having a problem recently with Windows Vista Premium which is driving me up the wall.
I only got my new laptop about a week and a half ago and everything has been great, but recently (last 4 days) whenever I turn my laptop back on in the mornings, my programs have disapeared. Not all of them, but ususally the most recent ones. The desktop icons dissapear and are are replaced with "file" icons. When I go to the start menu and programs, the program folders are there, but when I open one of these programs, my laptop tells me 'the item that this shortcut refers to has been moved or is no longer available' .
When this first happened I re-installed my missing programs and they all worked fine again. Then when I turned my laptop on again the next morning, I had the same problem.
I've ran spybot today and also did a quick norton scan but no viruses or spyware was found. Im at my wits end and I dont want to keep having to download these files again.

The laptop manufacturer is Advent.
Processor is Intel Celeron 440@1.86GHZ 1.87GHZ
Memory (Ram) - 894mb
System Type - 32bit Operting Sysytem

any help would be greatly appreciated . Thanks!

[JESEDIA]

Have you recently (in the last 4-5 days) installed any programs or external hardware?

[jrshankill]

Yes I have... quite a few actually. Ive been ripping my CDs and creating backups with MagicISO... I downloaded a FLV. video converter, firefox and Spybot.

[JESEDIA]

Ahhh...

"I downloaded a FLV. video converter,..."

I would uninstall that video converter, SHOTDOWN the machine. Wait 10 seconds (as this clears memory) then start the machine back up, and see if it improves. But it certainly sounds like something that was installed recently. Think back to what you may have installed, and when you first noticed this issue. Chances are though, that video converter has a .dll or something conflicting with Vista.

Is this Video converter approved for Vista? If not... Then there you go.

Vista's Aero is picky, so you have to be careful on what you install as far as video is concerned.

Cheers!

[jrshankill]

Yeah I already did uninstall the video converter this morning. Im going to find a vista approved download now, install it, leave the laptop off for a while, reboot and hope that its still there.

I'll report back here if the program files remain intact.
Thanks for the help !

[JESEDIA]

Oh, you did uninstall that already? Have you noticed an improvement so far?

Yes. Please do keep me updated.

And you're VERY welcome!

Cheers!