Vista - Cannot open Theme Settings, Display Settings, Screen Saver Settings, etc

Hi everyone. new to the forum. Trying to find a solution to my problem.

I have vista ultimate on a DELL XPS laptop.

I have 2 user accounts, both admin.

The second account i setup today by default had the windows classic theme, so i clicked personalize the change it. but to my surprise, when i clicked on the "Theme" link in the personalize menu, nothing happened - no popup or error message, literally nothing.

i then tried clicking on display settings, same thing. Same thing for Window Color and Appearance and Screensaver. The only links which work from my personalize menu are "Desktop Background, Sounds and Mouse Pointers". Same problem happens in the first user account too i checked.

Im running latest version of norton antivirus, and have run a scan with nothing detected.

Any help or fixes would be greatly appreciated. google wasnt my friend trying to find a solution for this.

anybody else got any ideas?
have had the same problem since i got my toshiba laptop about a year
ago!
gonna reformat/install on the weekend anyway, as the discs are at my
parents house and i keep forgetting to pick them up.
A few of the control panel options work, but i can't open themes
Also i can't open control panel from the button on the start menu
either

It says it can't find explorer.exe or something

any help would be great


--
owain
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owain's Profile: http://winvistaclub.com/forum/member.php?userid=845
View this thread: http://winvistaclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24055

On Nov 13, 12:10*pm, owain <owain.3it...@xxxxxx> wrote:Have you tried running system file checker (sfc)? I was having a
problem where none of the control panel applets were working,
including windows update. After running SFC /scannow the problem seems
to have gone away, as in my control panel applets and windows update
now work.

I am just a hack, but plan an hour or so if you do choose to run SFC,
as it does take a while. If you are not familiar with SFC, google it
and do a little research on it before running it. FYI it does come
with windows, and is run in the command line interface.

--Jim

might give that a go, cheers

don't i need the windows discs though?
havn't got anything here with me


--
owain
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owain's Profile: http://winvistaclub.com/forum/member.php?userid=845
View this thread: http://winvistaclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24055