cheekyg

Please help,

I am new to this forum and not the greatest when it comes to computer speak but I am in a mess with my computer and to make it worse I am in Thailand with very little IT expertise to help. The problems are;

- my computer will not uninstall any programs
- computer will not install progams
- it takes forever to shut down, and when it is trying to shut down it keeps saying "installing updates" (although it never does install any updates).
- The same thing happens when I start up (although this only takes 5 mins (to start) as opposed to 30 -50 minutes to shut down. When it starts up it says installing updates 1 to 3 - but then it never installs any updates.

I have tried to install vista service pack 2 in hope that this might help but it gets so far then i get a screen saying "preparing computer" but then nothing happens.

I think I might have wiped some software when i did a clean up - but i am desperate to solve this problem while I am here and I have no disks with me to do a full system reboot.

I have done a system restore to the earliest date recorded on the computer and this still does not help solve any of my computer problems.

Anything you can suggest to sort this out will be greatly appreciated.