Start menu run/search box won't work

Windows 7 Ultimate, upgrade install from Vista. Toshiba Satellite laptop. I searched for this both in Google and on this forum, can't find anything. I can type into the search/run box in the start menu, but nothing happens when I do. No search items come up; if I type in a program name, I can't make it run by hitting enter. If I open a command prompt I can run anything I want from there. This happened several weeks after the upgrade, it was working fine. I had to clean several virus infections, so my thinking is that something got removed from the registry that shouldn't have. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance, forums like this have been a lifesaver for me more than once. I rarely have to post, I can usually find my problem, but this one seems to be a bit odd.
P.S. Just remembered the other odd thing that happened, seemingly along with the above: my "printers and devices" window is empty. The devices are there, and work, but they're not listed in the window. As far as I know, this happened around the same time the other issue did. I did find some mention of this problem on the net, but none of the fixes worked for me. Don't know if it's relevant or not, but better too much info than not enough. Thanks again.

Indexing wouldn't have any effect on the ability to run programs from the run box, would it? Both are non-functional.