A couple days ago, I noticed that my gadgets didn't load in vista (Premium 64-bit). I restarted, they still didn't load. I tried closing and restarting the sidebar, and still nothing, so I went to re-add them, except the entire list of gadgets was empty, not even preloaded vista gadgets.
The same day I also found that when I went to open my Network and Sharing Center. It closes immediately when I open it, and today, I found that windows update does the same thing. Also I found that vista's windows update can't be accessed through the web pages, it's a program only for vista, so I can't access the windows update system to check for updates.
I've reinstalled the 3.5 .NET framework and SP1 for it. I also know there's a site where I can download updates manually without it scanning for what I need, but that really doesn't help me much since I have no clue what updates I need, or which ones I should try to reinstall to attempt to fix this.
In addition, I've ran several scans for viruses, malware, spyware, etc. and they've all come up with nothing but tracking cookies.
Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

so, I've tried to do some looking around through various options on my laptop and found that pretty much if it can be accessed through the control panel, it simply closes right when it opens