Vista - Applications Not Launching

Greetings,

Have an HP Pavillion running Vista x64 Home Premium. Ran into a problem today where I cannot get applications to run on the computer. When I attempt to launch an application (IE, Word, Excel) from the quick start bar, you can see an indication that the application is attempting to launch but never opens. When I check in Task Manager there is no indication that the application or the exe has launched. I am able to get the applications to run in Safe mode.

When I attempt to open documents from the desktop I get an error message that Windows cannot find the file and that I should check my spelling and retry.

I attempted a System Restore but was unsuccesful with two restore points. Ran Ad-Aware - nothing detected. Ran AntiVir - no problems. Ran CC Cleaner in safe mode - no help.

In Normal mode I was able to get IE to open (64 bit) but the other IE option would not open.

Any help and/or guidance would be greatly appreciated...

RS