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#1
Bizarre Win7 Behavior
I've got a recent Windows 7 install that is showing some very strange behavior. Before I describe the symptoms I'll describe my theory as to what caused it.
Basically, I added an SSD to my system and decided to start with a fresh Windows 7 install on the SSD to get the most performance benefit out of it. I left the old disk with the previous Windows 7 install connected, so the system actually had 2 Windows 7 installs on it for awhile. I'm almost positive that is not the problem.
However, at one point I booted into the old Windows 7 install, and wanted to access some files that I had placed on the Desktop of the newer install. This caused permission denied errors, so to get around that I did a "Take Ownership" operation (Right Click -> Properties -> Security -> Advanced -> Owner -> Edit) of the *entire* SSD volume from within the old version of Windows 7.
This caused some immediate problems when booting into the newer install. Most of those were resolved by repeating the "Take Ownership" operation from within the new install (so now the SSD volume and everything on it has my user account set as the owner). Some strange issues have persisted, however, and I assume that they are related to the file ownership changes that I made.
Anyways, the problems I have left are:
1. Some application icons disappear (they are replaced with the standard "no icon" placeholder graphic) and cannot be restored or modified (the "Change Icon..." option is grayed out/disabled). This has happened to Skype and VMWare Fusion, so far. Both started out with valid icons, and then lost them a couple of weeks after being installed.
2. My Windows Media Player music library thrashes itself. It will randomly forget all the songs that are in it until I forcibly delete it and re-add all the files. Or sometimes instead of that it will start displaying the same file multiple times. Typically what happens is that each time I play a song, a duplicate entry for that song appears in the media list. The duplicate entries do not go away (until the next point at which the *entire* library goes away), and if I delete one of the duplicates, the other ones cease to work (i.e. the song will no longer play).
3. Every time I start Internet Explorer after a reboot, it brings up a message saying "A program on your computer has corrupted your default search provider setting for Internet Explorer". It then brings up a dialog for me to choose a search provider, but the only one listed is "Bing", and all the options except for "Close" are disabled. Once I hit "Close", IE seems to work fine until the next reboot.
4. I cannot install any updates or new versions of IE using Windows Update. The update/install fails with code 9C48.
5. I cannot install Windows Update KB2607576, it fails with error code 8024402C. This is listed as an optional update. All the "important" updates install without issue.
Currently I am working around the second issue by creating a backup copy of my media library's database file when it is in a known-good state. Then whenever it wipes itself out or starts getting populated with duplicates I kill the WMP process and replace the current database file with the backup copy. This works, but is extremely inconvenient.
Any help resolving these issues would be greatly appreciated.