Certain Programs refuse to launch

Hello everyone!

I got a very strange problem which nobody else seems to have had before:

Some programs cannot be started normally. If I open them, they usually close themselves within a few seconds. The cursor indicates some loading, and the current explorer windows loses focus - it looks like a new window is opening any second. But nothing happens. The process is shown in the Taskmanager, but only for a few seconds.
Now, if I use Windows 98 compatibility mode, and only on this mode, it suddenly works. All other modes don't but, Win98 does - the programms now start correctly, but the programs think they are running on Win98, so some features don't work.
These programs aren't working in that manner so far:

Google Earth
Teamspeak 3
Mumble
Origin

There are probably more. Origin is interesting: Some months ago, I used Sandboxie to launch it, which made it work even without compatibility mode. But after some update of Origin, I cannot run it that way anymore. Win98 mode works of course - but then I cannot install or play Games which require Windows 7.

It's really strange that these programs all show the same symptoms. I guess I have killed some driver or something, but sfc /scannow says all is fine.

So... anybody got an idea?

I had this problem for quite a while now. In fact, I cannot even remember not having it. At first I thought that Teamspeak or whatever was the first program with this problem was just not working, but when the other programs showed the same behaviour, I tested the compatibility mode thing I found out, and somehow it was the same for all of them. After many months of occasional googling and posting and asking people I know I got here. System restore was my first thought, but of course - there is no restore point before the problems occured. And reinstall did not solve anything either - tried it multiple times with the programs affected.

I had Avira Antivirus installed, but removed it because I thought it might cause the problem. I now have AVG, but it seems my PC is clean.


Of course I could just reinstall Windows, but for problems like these, I'd like to know what causes them and maybe how to solve them instead of just overkilling the problem with a reinstall. Apart from that, I'd have to reinstall everything else. Not fun :P

Okay, I will make a Malwarebytes scan, but at the moment I'm testing something else:

In Safe Mode, all of these programs start correctly! So now I'm looking for a way to get a list of the drivers that are not loaded when booted in safe mode. If this doesn't work, I'm trying out the scan.

Interesting. When executing a program with WinDbg, I can make it work. For the mentioned programs the following message appears between other debug lines:

HEAP[mumble.exe]: Invalid address specified to RtlFreeHeap( 02B90000, 03A812A0 )
(d1c.ef4): Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance)
eax=03a81298 ebx=03a81298 ecx=77650b42 edx=0035e3e5 esi=02b90000 edi=02b90000
eip=776b0574 esp=0035e62c ebp=0035e62c iopl=0 nv up ei pl nz na po nc
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00000202
ntdll!RtlpNtEnumerateSubKey+0x3947:
776b0574 cc int 3

The same message appears for Origin:

HEAP[Origin.exe]: Invalid address specified to RtlFreeHeap( 02700000, 06F012A0 )
(1058.8fc): Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance)
eax=06f01298 ebx=06f01298 ecx=77650b42 edx=0035e509 esi=02700000 edi=02700000
eip=776b0574 esp=0035e750 ebp=0035e750 iopl=0 nv up ei pl nz na po nc
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00000202
ntdll!RtlpNtEnumerateSubKey+0x3947:
776b0574 cc int 3

Funny thing is, after I use the "Go" option 2 times, the program launches successfully! So the problematic programs now work with this workaround. Next I will try out the scan...

Hooray! I fixed it. Turns out the Tablet driver/service was the problem. I deactivated the service - it works now! Probably a bad driver installed with my wacom driver.