[Rajveer]

Hi guys, I've been running Vista x64 for just under 2 months and everything was fine up until today. All of a sudden while using my pc, the shortcuts and internet explorer/email links have disappeared within my start menu (everything on the right side is still there) leaving a huge white space. Also, right-clicking on my taskbar and going to properties, followed by changing something to do with either the start-menu or the toolbars makes the window hang and taskbar/start menu hang, and explorer needs to be restarted. I installed a few programs today: Photoshop CS3, PowerISO, MagicISO (couple of my standard tools) but none of these should have affected my setup. I've tried checking error reports, setting diagnostic mode in msconfig, booting in safe mode, checking for viruses with Kaspersky, but no help. I REALLY don't want to have to reinstall Vista, and if it comes down to it I'll probably reinstall XP as I've never had any problems like this before, so help me make my Vista purchase worth it!

[Elvandil]

Try uninstalling Magic. I had to disable its context menu dll due to problems with explorer. And there especially could be a problem since both Power ISO and MagicISO load similar drivers.

Are these 64-bit compatible programs or are you trying to use 32-bit drivers? There is a definite shortage of programs for 64. I didn't realize that those even came in both versions.

Or at least try going to View > Settings and disabling the shell integration.

[Rajveer]

I uninstalled both MagicISO and PowerISO but nothings changed. They were the standard version, so most probably 32-bit, but they are compatible with Vista 64 (actually not sure about PowerDVD). Its times like this that I wish I hadn't disabled System Restore

[Rajveer]

Ok I tried to do a Startup Repair but it found no problems. Startup Repair only checks startup problems right, and not problems with the whole installation, so that makes sense. It seems as if the repair installation option has been removed from Vista, so I tried "SFC /SCANNOW" to check for file integrity and it found nothing.

I am so confused, doesn't seem to be software incompatibility as it would have been fine under safe mode or diagnostics mode, but its not finding any problems

EDIT: Ok something interesting, I created a new account which doesn't have any of these problems. Start menu looks fine, I can change taskbar properties without having to restart explorer or the computer. What's my next step? Should I copy over my user files to this new account, delete my old one, recreate it and copy the user files back? Will this keep everything?

[Elvandil]

I guess. If you have a corrupted profile, that should fix it. But why not just do all the copying once? Can you deal with a new account name that is different by even one letter?

You can find the applet to copy profiles in the User Accounts section of System Properties.

Fix A Corrupted User Profile

[Rajveer]

I'd rather keep the same username incase I'm using a program that is username sensitive i.e. keeps the username in a save file or something (just in case).

After some testing, I've found its the ntuser.dat file which is causing trouble. Problem is since this file contains the whole of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER section of the registry, replacing it will mean I will lose all of my application specific settings. So I think the first option would be to try and fix the registry, and since I have no idea where to start looking within it do you have any ideas about what I should try?

[Elvandil]

Any recent backups to that hive in the same folder?

[Rajveer]

Nope, I have:

ntuser.dat
ntuser.dat.log1
ntuser.dat.log2
NTUSER.DAT{LONG CODE}.TM.blf
NTUSER.DAT{LONG CODE}.TMContainer00000000000000000001.regtrans-ms
NTUSER.DAT{LONG CODE}.TMContainer00000000000000000002.regtrans-ms

but I don't think they're backup files. Also, since I turned System Restore off when I first installed Vista, I won't have any backups there right? Are any of those registry fixing applications worth a shot? If not then it looks like the only thing to do is create a new profile and go through setting up my whole system again

EDIT: Maybe I can create 2 new users: one to replace my current one and one to test it all with. While in the test profile I can copy over sections of the old registry to the new profile's registry until I can recreate the error, then I can narrow down which registry entry is corrupt? Think that's feasable?

[Elvandil]

Sounds like a plan.

Don't bother with "registry fixers". They don't "fix" anything, and if you go through the "fixes" they propose, the vast majority of them are errors themselves. The closest they come to a "fix" is to redirect to a file with the same name. If there is only one, they get it right. If the file is named "setup" or some other common name, they create a new entry to the first file with that name that they find, which is 99% of the time the wrong file.

[Rajveer]

Wow, the plan worked great (long but it worked!) Finally tracked the bug down to ProgramsCache in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Start Page" (whats scary is that I did so much testing that I've memorised that location :S ). So I backed it up and replaced it with the one from the temporary user, and its working normally now. It hasn't changed the list of programs in the start menu so I'm not too sure what it does, but it works so I cant complain! Thanks for all the help and time

[Elvandil]

Good job. Glad you avoided the "fixers" or you'd be worse off instead of better.

Yes, those profiles are pretty big sometimes and it sure takes a long time when you are wondering if it will work at all.

You can mark your own threads "solved" using the Thread Tools above.

[psgame_freak]

I had the same problem as well, i tried both the cmd scf /scannow, downloaded the hotfix (which said it didnt apply to my vista sp1), rebooted on safemode several times, removed all foreign startups and like your problem, i lost all icons on the recently used programs list and taskbar would freeze on startup (restarting explorer.exe fixed the problem but it would just freeze again).

Thanks for the hard work rajveer! Bookmarking this gold

[Rajveer]

Not a problem, glad my solution worked for you too