Hi, last night,just playing media files on media center. The night was fine, no problems, didn't do any installations or surfing, pure playing entertainment. Shut down at the end of the night, lovely. Switch on this morning at 8am, and it's took 55 minutes to get to a stage where vista is usable, and still it won't show my network in it's window. To elaborate, here's what happened. Switched on, after 12 minutes with a frozen loading bar, I resigned to a forced shut off. Switched on again, and was told I had a startup error, vista was attempting a repair. 15 minutes later, it tells me vista cannot repair the problem (what problem??). and shuts down. yet another reboot, and after 10 minutes of waiting, it decides it's configuring updates (It never even told me it had any, never mind clicking ok to any installation). 55 minutes since first switch on, I finally get to my desktop, and had to wait 10 minutes before it was usable. I go to my network, to find it's unaccessable. I can't click anywhere to get it. I used my head and opened WMP and played a tune that I knew resided upstairs on another pc, and it played, so I opened the containing folder, and there I was in my network. I am still unable to see anything other than my laptop in the network window, so I have to open a containing folder from WMP in order to access my network. Pardon my french but how F&£^&* up is that?? Almost 3 weeks I've had vista, and I cannot use xp for compatability issues (making my laptop buttons useless), I can restore blindfolded I've done it enough times, and I'm sure my hard drive won't last long for the amounts of resets and updates it had done none stop since getting it (On top of a constant drive access when it's doing nothing). What a fantastic operating system. I think even if I did find out what's wrong, I don't think I could possibly remember because tomorrow, and the day after something else will go t!ts up that I have spend another few hours repairing.

I'm a little confused. Where do you stand now with the Vista box? Can you get to the desktop? If so, can you do a system restore? What model PC is it? Have you installed SP1 for Vista?

It seems to me you have fallen foul of Vista's auto update . From your syntax I would guess you are from the UK so up date Tuesday for you would be update Wednesday ( up date Tuesday is the second Tuesday of every month ) So what may have happened is an update got damaged .

I have posted this solution on this forum twice before , This link is a tutorial from Bleeping computers and it it explains the repair options , you may not have a full Vista disc so the second link is a PE of Vista which will do . If you don't use torrent just double click on it and choose the browser of your choice , although it's a large down load it will be well worth the effort . No 404s yet again ! . http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tut... . http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windo... I would try start-up repair & then system restore to before the last lot of updates on the 11th or 12th Nov.

Hi sorry for late post. I am backto desktop, no need for a system restore really. I finished up with only being able to access my network by using media player to "open containing folder" to a song i "know" is on the network. then i simply use the explorer window to get where i want. I admit i was ranting about clicking "network" from start button, and having no network present. I have since discovered that leaving the "network" window open for about half an hour eventually shows up my network. but apart from the flickering task bar now and again, i'm learning to "ignore" the quirks vista continues to show. Like my first post, the problems i'm having today are 2 things... 1 is that if i try to move anything on the network, it says the file is in use (it isn't), but I am able to copy and paste the file, and then delete the "in use" file no problem. not even attempting to find a fix for that. the other is now and again, if I rename a file, when i press enter, the file simply vanishes from the window. I then have to undo my rename, and do it all over again, and then it works. I'm fully updated with eset and defender, and avg security suite, so, I'm just learning to just deal with Vista now.