Shelby Cain

I received a free copy of Vista Business through the "Power of Together"
promotion.

As I'm currently evaluating whether or not Vista is going to fit my needs I
haven't yet activated the copy. I'm currently try to find a permanent
solution to an issue where Vista appears to go into something that I can only
describe as partial reduced functionality mode after every reboot. The
control panel in the start menu shows as empty, attempting to open the
control panel causes the window to appear briefly and then close. Other
features like the Windows Welcome Center show similar behavior either not
opening at all (with the mouse cursor switching to the circular activity
animation) or the window opening and the closing immediately.

I spent many hours troubleshooting thinking this was potentially a
hardware/driver issue until I eventually discovered people complaining of the
same issue and that what I was facing was in fact Vista going into reduced
functionality mode without telling me. The current work-around for the issue
is stopping and restarting the Software License service after a reboot but
obviously that isn't a permanent solution.

I've reinstalled Vista several times and I can't isolate anything in
particular that would be causing this issue. Does anyone have any
suggestions on how to resolve this?

Regards,

Shelby Cain