Anomalies after recent Windows update

[J Austin]

I've been using Vista Ultimate very successfully since it was first
introduced. Today when I booted my Sony laptop it went into a process
"setting up desktop" as if were a brand new start-up. When it did come up
everything (shorcuts) was missing from my desktop and all the settings were
different (e.g., screen saver). I immediately did a hard re-boot and after 2
tries I got a successful normal configuration boot. I decided to create a
new restore point in case it was needed. Then I noticed that the last
restore point was this morning (4/7/2010) for a Window automatic update. Has
anyone seen anything unusual with this update? My machine is definately
working differently. The boot took a full 10 minutes (normal 3) and the cpu
and disk drive were running full out. Now I'm not sure what configuration I
have and what harm may have been done by this anomalous boot or what caused
it. Nothing was changed on the machine prior to the anomaly.

 

[Rojo Habe]

After a recent IE 8 update (which I only installed because it was listed as
"Important" and I'm not sure how deeply IE weaves itself into the OS these
days) I ended up with two desktop shortcuts missing their icons (the .ico
files were actually gone without a trace) and one of my Firefox plugins was
missing (also gone without a trace). System restore failed to restore them.
Not as drastic as what you experienced but still weird.

When stuff like this happens I always suspect some sort of malware at work
but thorough scans with all the popular tools revealed nothing.