The last days my computer has started to act very strangely. I cant get my desktop background to come up at all. And all my icons on the desktop are nicely ordered on the upper right corner of the desktop. Sometimes I get an error message asking me if I want to recover my active desktop, I've clicked yes but that did not help. Also my computer turns it self off every now and then. I've run virus check, but nothing. today I could not even go into gmail, I got an error saying error code 776 or (perhaps it was 766). any advice at all? please help!

This is going on more and more...I think that M$ update is to blame...just haven't nailed it down as to yet. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

apparently when the updates came out this past Tuesday, one of them failed to interact properly with the desktop manager and has been causing a few issues with desktop shutting down and not restarting. And since M$ has started disabling system restore during downloads then system restore can't remove the troublesome download and restore your system either..Bad Microsoft. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

And since M$ has started disabling system restore during downloads ... Are you sure my friend? I checked this machine SR. I have verified that M$ created Software Distribution Service point prior to downloading Tuesday's patches. i_XpUser

Ditto here. SR point on Tues.

yes there is an new restore point installed...the question is...Was the restore point created before the update or after the update so that they can't be restored back and removed In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

Let me clarify something... Updates interact with both desktop and system restore. When an update is noted that it can't be removed after installation, system restore is changed so that no prior restoration points can be usedm or will not work ..the dreaded"your computer was not restored to a prior date. nothing was changed on your computer" notice that you get after trying. During the downloading of the update if it fails for any reason the desktop manager usually gets nailed right along with it as well as IE also simply because of the interaction between the update and desktop manager and IE. This can be seen in the auto update service: 1. Click Start->Run, type "services.msc" (without quotation marks) in the open box and click OK. 2. Double click the service "Automatic Updates". 3. Click on the Log On tab, please ensure the option "Local System account" is selected and the option "Allow service to interact with desktop" which has to be checked. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."