T60 ThinkVantatage Corruption

[absentminded]

Hi all.

I own a T60 2623 D6U, approximately 10 months. This morning when I booted up, my start up apps wouldn't load and my thinkvantage programs have stopped working.

Timeline
On Wednesday night my Access Connections program experienced a "critical error" according to WinXP and it shut them down. I selected "Shut Down and Install Updates" and went to sleep. Normally I leave my laptop on stand by or hibernate overnight for about a week or two at a time before a hard reboot. I also normally check what updates are being installed before I allow windows to go ahead, but yesterday I uncharacteristically didn't bother. Earlier in the week I'd installed the Office 2007 computability package to open a Word 2k7 doc in Office 2k3.

Symptoms
-ThinkVantage Button does nothing anymore
-Opening up Productivity Center by clicking on the icon in the start menu opens a window with no buttons of menus except "close" and the title bar of the window just has boxes (uninteligble text). When I click on "customize" it shows all the things that normally appear checked off. It's clearly corrupted.
-None of the standard apps (Client Security, Access Connections, Active HD Protection, etc.) load up on startup
-I can launch some of the apps individually (access connections and active protection), but I can't make the power manager appear on the windows desktop toolbar

In addition
-Google Desktop doesn't load on startup anymore, but I can start it manually.
-avast! anti-virus doesn't load on boot up anymore. When I open it manually the active protection icon doesn't appear in the system tray.

-I opened msconfig and all the aforementioned apps are missing now.
-I'm down to only 60 processes running at bootup as a result

-I've tried running windows system restore but i get a "restore incomplete" notice when it reboots. I tried 3 different restore points

What happened and how can I fix it? My ThinkVantage suite is corrupted and my bootup config got swallowed up too. Any way to restore this?

Thanks!

[GomJabbar]

It's hard to say what happened exactly. It is possible your hard drive is failing. You should probably check the disk for errors first. Open My Computer and right-click on the C: drive, choose Properties > Tools > and under Error-checking, Check Now... It is also possible you got infected with a virus.

Look in Event Viewer for any ATAPI errors which may indicate a hard drive problem. Go to: Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Try one of the following for a more thorough disk check.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Fujitsu Diagnostic Tool and Erase Utility

Samsung HUTIL

Regarding System Restore, try running it from Windows SAFE MODE (press F8 at the beginning of the boot sequence).

If you run Norton AntiVirus or Norton Internet Security, these can interfere with System Restore.
Message: "Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored . . . " when you run Windows System Restore

[absentminded]

No Atapi error. Check Now doesn't turn anything up. Tried System Restore in Safe Mode, no dice. System restore itself says a Restore Incomplete message at start up.

Any other ideas?

New Symptoms- I think some of the thinkvantage stuff is running in the background- at least active protection is. The system still freezes when I move the laptop and comes unfrozen when i put it down.