As we all know, Microsoft released a bundle of updates on Patch Tuesday yesterday. I dutifully told Windows Update to install and I went to bed. This evening, when I finally got back on my computer, things are weird.
First thing I noticed is none of my pinned Start Menu items are in the pin area. But if I go to any of the shortcuts in All Programs and right-click, the option says "Unpin from Start Menu." I rebooted, and this behavior persisted. I went to Outlook 2007's shortcut and told it to unpin and it appeared in the pin area (highlighted, too -- I turn highlighting off).
I opened Filezilla, and it welcomed me to the latest update, which I haven't done in a couple weeks. My site manager was empty. Grrr.
I opened Outlook, and immediately got "an error occurred in the folder shortcuts file (.fav). Outlook will recreate the default folder shortcuts." I reopened Outlook with the /resetnavpane
switch and got the same. My favorites are gone.
Also, dropdown menus throughout Windows seem to be aligned along their right edges (not the text, just the menus).
I've tried searching, but I'm not sure what to search for. Everything I found regarding Outlook told how to fix it (which didn't work) but not why it was happening. Everything I found regarding Windows 7 was release candidate. I also pored through the event viewer but didn't see anything untoward. I ran a full scan in Security Essentials, everything came up clean.
It really seems like something in my profile got hosed. I haven't noticed any missing files, nor missing browser favorites, but clearly something has happened. I'd really like to avoid reinstalling. I also haven't tried using a restore point because all the updates will want to install again, and I just don't have the time to install them one by one.
EDIT: By the way, Outlook won't Send/Receive. No error, it just doesn't do anything. My account settings are still there. Also, I performed a System Restore, and no change. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the updates, but it still seems awfully coincidental to me.
So... any ideas?