Hi!
I wrote post #40. I was having the same problems described in this thread. I haven't done any installations or uninstallations but the symptoms have not manifested recently (an entire weekend).

I'm not sure if there was a Windows update that came through silently or if it helped that I accepted to remotely assist someone else with an unrelated Vista issue.

Has anyone else, that was having this problem, noticed a similar change? If you did, then maybe whatever the culprit was got fixed by an auto-update. If you didn't then maybe my problem isn't resolved yet or it is resolved but I have no clue what I did that fixed it.