I had to turn off my computer by hitting the power button yesterday, after my monitor card got inadvertently dislodged when I was upgrading my RAM to 1024 MB (2 512 chips), so I couldn't use the usual ways of shutting down.  Since then, I've had several problems:

 

1.  When I click on My Computer, it takes 30 sec to populate with my drive icons.  (I've worked around that my putting shortcuts on my desktop).

 

2.  When I click Save from an application like Word it takes also about 30 sec for the dropdown list of locations to save to to appear and be active.

 

3.  When I type a URL in the address bar of IE, if I just use the www.xxx.com URL, it again takes 30 sec (I've timed all this) to load and go to the page.  If I type just the "xxx" part, and hit CTRL-ENTER, it goes there right away, or if I type the address with the http:// prefix, it goes right to it, or if I use a hyperlink no problem.

 

4.  My Start menu seems to be active even when I haven't opened it.  Sometimes in trying to do one task, I get an error message that another task is running and I have to switch to it.  If I click on Start and then close it, things work OK again.

 

I tried to revert my system to a time before this was happening, but Windows won't do it for me.  There are ways to work around most of these problems, but they are a pain in the neck.

 

So what in the world is going on?  And how can I fix them?