Control panel, aero, games and alt+tab stopped working.

[D. Ebdrup]

Okay, so last week or so I was cleaning up my msconfig startup options,
removing the third-party programs that sometimes likes to start up with
Windows.

After this and doing a restart to make sure I had disabled the stuff I
wanted, I noticed that Aero and alt-tab wasn't working. This didn't worry me
a bit since I just thought that I might have disabled some of the needed
files for my nVidia graphics card - so I went to their website and downloaded
the latest driver.

After installing it and restarting it, it didn't help - then I noticed that
Personalize (From the right-click menu on the desktop) didn't work either. So
I went to the control panel, only to find that it wasn't working either (and
the menu in my Start-menu was empty of entries in the Control Panel
selection).

So this week I decide to do a bit of digging around on the internet to see
if other people have encountered similar problems and I find that some have
had problems with drivers (mostly ati, nvidia and intel graphics drivers)
messing up the licensing service of Windows Vista. So I completely removed
the graphics drivers of my nvidia card and installed them again - no success.

So now I'm left with the problem that the licensing service (and the
messaging service that's linked to the licensing service) aren't working - or
I should say, the licensing service starts like it should, but the licensing
messaging service doesn't and that's (apparently what's causing my problems,
since Vista thinks it's now an expired trial license, and thus it has
disabled the features, like it's supposed to - or that's what I can piece
together, at least).

Thus, I'm asking if anyone knows of a solution to this problem that doesn't
involve me reinstalling Windows Vista as this is a rather tedious task I
don't want to have to do (since I'm triple-booting on OSX and FreeBSD and
using Windows boot manager to do so)..

So please help me..

 

[Hobo]

You can try doing a restore using a restore point prior to
when your troubles started.

Hobo

 

[D. Ebdrup]

Nope, using system restore did (as I expected) not work (and I should have
mentioned that I expected it, because services and their functions aren't
among the things that are backed up with system restore)..

Does anyone have any other suggestions besides the obvious; something that
might actually lead to a solution of my problem.

 

[Hobo]

Well, since that didn't work for you, the next obvious thing
would be to do a system back-up restore. You did back-up
your system, or at least the msconfig file, before you
started arbitrarily deleting entries didn't you? If not, a
re-install looks like your answer.

 

[D. Ebdrup]

I do not have a system-wide backup, no - but I already tried restoring the
msconfig file to its former settings without any luck at all.