Cannot open control panel nor system properties Vista Ultimate

[Minerva]

What can cause this?

It works on the initial startup.

Restart and BAM! Cannot open the system control panel. Double click it and see the ring "busy" icon for a second and it disappears! Right click the computer icon to go to properties, same thing!

 

[Tegeril]

I had this happen in my initial install of Vista. It corresponded with the installation of WinDVD 8. I system restored and it fixed itself. It happened again (unrelated to WinDVD) and I just reformatted (this was a test install for 2 weeks to figure out what would/would not break Vista x64). Haven't seen it since. Wish I knew what caused it in the first place in case it were to come back. Some people were supposing that it might deal with an unstable overclock...I was OC'ing, and have also toned it back a tad. I found that Windows Key + Tab also stopped working at the same time.

 

[Smilin]

There have been some nVidia drivers issues causing this as well. Mismatched control panel component or something to that effect..

Do you have anything 3rd party installed that would add a control panel icon?

 

[Don66]

I have to agree on the Nvidia driver issue.

It's a hard one to track down...
Let's hope that a fix for this elusive issue can be found.

 

[Tegeril]

I haven't seen the issue since my reformat and have used the 100.54s, 100.65s, and tested the 101.40s before reverting because of new bugs in media center.

 

[Minerva]

I'm going to try this again.

Running (perfectly stable) win 2k right now. :Q

 

[farrellart]

I had this problem.....nothing to do with Nvidia Drivers for me as it only happened when I unplugged my usb wacom tablet. replacing it fixed the problem. A bit of an odd one.

 

[spankaroo]

Joined this forum just to post a reply here - since this is the only place I could find people with a similar problem and I finally managed to solve mine last night.

I have Vista Ultimate (32) on an Asus Striker Extreme motherboard with an Intel QX6700 and 4 GB RAM... and pretty ticked off that I seemed to have everything working really well and suddenly I could no longer open Control Panel. Also, when I opened the Games browser, I couldn't start any of the Vista default games (like solitaire or hearts). The Windows+Tab fancy task switching stopped working too... Amazing that you don't even get an error message of any kind!

One of the worst parts of this is that all of Microsoft's help seems to tell you to go to the Control Panel to do stuff. People in this situation will get lost quickly! Windows Update can only start from the Control Panel now, so good luck telling people to get a patch...

First, a discovery: If you really need to use the Control Panel, try browsing using the Windows Explorer (where you browse your hard drive)... turn the folder tree on. I was able to browse to the Control Panel options there even though Control Panel itself wouldn't start for me.

Next, a hard lesson: My frustration caused me to call Microsoft Support -- only to learn that OEM versions of Microsoft products don't come with the initial 90 days of support. Doh!

What didn't work: I tried disabling all startup programs and their associated services (for the software I had installed)... Nothing seemed to help! Then, I installed a new BIOS revision... no joy. Then, I went back to stock clock settings -- of course no joy.

What finally did it: I found a recently updated sound driver for my onboard sound. After installing and rebooting -- bang! Everything works like normal.

It doesn't make much sense to me. I just didn't expect a sound driver to prevent so many built-in Vista functions from working. Especially without throwing up an error message of some kind. I browsed a bit through the Event Viewer to see if I could decipher it -- but alas, I didn't have the patience for that endeavour.

Lesson learned: drivers seem to be the biggest problem -- like others are saying, I know -- but even where you think it wouldn't be the problem -- it turns out that it is. Microsoft should do something about not detecting an error, but drivers seem to be the answer when there is trouble lately.

Anyway, I hope some of this helps. Good Luck all!