Software licensing service needs to be enabled for some of those to work, like the control panel. If it got diasabled, that could be the problem. Go to control panel\adminstrator tools\services scroll down to software licensing service. See if it's enabled and running, if not, right click it and pick properties. Select start service automatically from the drop down menu, and then start service from the buttons in same window.

If the service is already running, then there is a good chance you got a virus or bug, as closing windows is a common symptom of this. Do a complete system scan with your virus and adware programs to see what it finds.

Another option would be to do a windows repair if you have your vista disk. Again, if you do the repair and the problem is fixed and stays gone then your good, if not I 'd keep hunting for bugs.

 

I had the same problem last sunday. I isolated the problem to a process running called 48a1cbe4. I terminated the process through Task Manager and the problem was resolved. I ran Hijackthis to fix the problem permanently. Here is the entry:

O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [48a1cbe4] rundll32.exe "C:\Users\Frank\AppData\Local\Temp\emtdqylu.dll",b

Notice that it is running from a temporary library. Don't know where I picked that up.