Applications are not launching - Help

[SJS]

For the past couple of days, for some reason, certain apps appear not to be
launching when I click either on the link or on the .exe file itself. I say
'appear' because nothing pops up on screen, but yet if I look at the
processes in Windows Task Manager, I can see application(s).

For example, this evening, I tried to launch Adobe Reader 7.0 to view a PDF
document, and I downloaded and tried to install WinRAR 3.42.

At the same time, certain other apps which used to launch in a breeze now
take much longer. I have Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Personal Firewall up
and running. I did a complete scan of my machine, and nothing came up. The
only thing I did to my machine recently is that I removed a few unused apps.

Any ideas? Thank you.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Did you remove "the few unused apps" with Add/Remove Programs or by some
other means? Did you remove some shared dll's if asked?

 

[SJS]

Yes, the programs were removed with Add/Remove Programs. And no, there were
no shared dlls to be removed.

To give you an update, last night, I decided to give WinRAR another try. So
after launching it, I checked the processes tab under Windows Task Manager.
Although WinRAR was not displayed on screen, as expected, it appeared as a
process. I checked to see if there were any other programs/processes hogging
memory: I looked down the CPU column, and also under the performance tab,
but did not notice anything particular. So I took a 10 minute break. When I
came back, WinRAR was finally "making an appearance" on my screen. I have
since tried several other apps that had failed initially to appear. I guess
I was not patient enough to wait 10 minutes -- but then again, I shouldn't
have to wait 10 minutes for each app to appear, right?

As always, your suggestions / ideas would be most appreciated. Thank you.

Did you remove "the few unused apps" with Add/Remove Programs or by some
other means? Did you remove some shared dll's if asked?

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)

For the past couple of days, for some reason, certain apps appear not to
be launching when I click either on the link or on the .exe file itself.
I say 'appear' because nothing pops up on screen, but yet if I look at
the processes in Windows Task Manager, I can see application(s).

For example, this evening, I tried to launch Adobe Reader 7.0 to view a
PDF document, and I downloaded and tried to install WinRAR 3.42.

At the same time, certain other apps which used to launch in a breeze now
take much longer. I have Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Personal Firewall
up and running. I did a complete scan of my machine, and nothing came up.
The only thing I did to my machine recently is that I removed a few
unused apps.

Any ideas? Thank you.