.exe files not working - on 2 different machines in 2 different places in one night.

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

I'm using Norton 360 on both machines.

On my machine, all the dozens of shortcut links on my desktop have lost
their color and their ability to start the associated .exe program. I have
to associate with the program, but the computer won't remember that the next
time.

 

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

As an aside, somebody just yelled that the red light of doom just lit up on
their MacBook. I probably shouldn't turn on my Playstation 3 then either.

 

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

I tried that securitygarden blogspot fix and now my .exe files work again
but my links to every program still haven't regained their default icons.
Wondering if it's OK to reboot yet?

 

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

I ran Process Monitor & it counts up like 100,000+ processes a minute so
it's impossible to scroll down to keep up with it. As soon as I left clicked
on My Computer (or My Documents or Control Panel) everything froze including
the Process Monitor. So I have to hard reboot. On reboot I brought up Task
Manager and whatever reading that first appears at it freezes at; it might
have no reading for RAM used & CPU used, or readings of 0 for both, or
normal readings that are insta-frozen. So I'm gonna use Task Manager to
determine if the machine is faulty instead of clicking on something I know
is gonna fault the machine so I can't log out to go to User 1.

I've deleted User 4 and created a new User with a different name but that
didn't help.

I can open programs like Irfanview & Roxio Home Creator in those Users
without crashing the machine. I've replaced explorer.exe with an identical
version from another machine (time stamp is 1 second different), but it
seems the explorer folder right next to explorer.exe in the Windows Folder
is the culprit; however running explorer.exe from Task Manager crashes the
machine.