Windows 7 programs won't open.

[jsfarthing]

Yesterday i recieved and installed windows 7 professional 64 bit upgrade (i had windows xp 32 bit). Anyway when i first booted up, everything was fine and worked as usually, however i then installed a few programs and now nothing will open. Internet explorer wont open unless i open the 64 bit version (which is annoying becuase flash won't download on a 64 bit browser). Other programs such as wondows live and even media player.
When i click on the icon, it loads for a few seconds and then nothing happens. The program doesn't load up and the task bar icon doesn't appear. The process does appear in task manager however.
The things i installed before it stopped working were avast anti virus, windows live and winRAR (in order to unzip and install audio drivers)
So anyway... Help please!

[Splash]

You did a clean install and not an upgrade, right? Thinking on you *must* have done because you can'tupgrade from a 32 bit to a 64 bit OS through the upgrade pathway.


The usual things really: eventlogs, how does it behave in safe mode, what AV etc? Is it retail media, or is it MSDN/Technet? If the latter have you verified checksums?

[this_is_gav]

Got an ASUS Xonar sound card?

Use task manager to terminate HsMgr.exe (or HsMgr64.exe - I don't remember) and if programs then load go and get the latest drivers or stop them from loading on startup using msconfig.

As bugs in drivers go this was an absolute shocker.

[qbie]

It may also be your exe file assiciations in the registry - I've seen it a few times in the last few months.

Try

This page or this one.