file - open gone haywire after windows update, any suggestions?

[GELF]

I have a Packard Bell Laptop with WinXP Home.. I did a reinstall
and installed SP1 from a CD and all went well with the machine working
fine for a couple of days. As soon as I could I connected to the
net and downloaded 27 critical updates all in one go and installed
them. Since then my machine seems to have gone a little haywire. The
very next morning it refused to boot and I had to go back to last
known working config. It seemed to work fine again, but now i've
noticed if I load any program such as word or paint shop pro and go to
"file" then "open" to open a document or picture etc.. it takes an
absolute age for the directory listing to appear before you're able to
choose the file. If you goto the hard drive and double click to
open all works fine. Similarly Adaware refuses to load and locks up
the laptop totally...

Can anyone help or offer any advice? Do think it could be something
to do with one of the 27 critical updates? or has my laptop decided to
co-incidentally die on me just after I updated...

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

What looks interesting in your system & app event logs?

 

[GELF]

At the risk of sounding silly. Where would I find those please?

 

[GELF]

Ok i've found the event viewer program.. looking in application,
security and system logs. Nothing gets logged in there when the
delay happens. It's a long pause when you try to open a file in
word, or paint shop pro or any other program, if you keep the prog
open and try again it does it instantly as it should. Close the prog
again and re-try and it's back to slow again..