I've recently installed windows vista and its been nothing but a nightmare. The start up is terribly slow and when it finally starts there is a huge problem. If I click an icon or attempt to log on the internet I get a "Windows explorer not responding" message. This happens constantly, I restart... same problem it just happens over and over. Right now I'm lucky to be on the internet without it crashing. Basically the computer constantly locks up and I can't figure out a way to fix it.

One other weird thing I noticed is I can click Mozilla Firefox 10 times and it wont load up. I then click internet explorer it loads up and crashes and immediately all 10 firefoxes open up and other programs I clicked during the lockup period. It's very strange.. any help would be appreciated.

Indeed. I've tried almost everything... guess I'll just have to reinstall.

as of original thread - firefox not opening, IE freezing. Computer locks up constantly.

Its a centrino duo Toshiba Satellite Laptop which is brand new and supplied with vista - not an upgrade

Upgrading often ends up more trouble than it's worth.

As Rich-M alluded to, the upgrade caused some driver conflicts. Being that you can access Windows, I'd opt for a back-up of all critical data and then perform a 'clean' install. If you try and diagnose the troubled devices and drivers, you'll end up spending more time than a backup and clean install.

What are the computer specs (ram, processor, graphics, hard drive) and was this an upgrade or clean install?

It was an upgrade, the specs on the computer are:

2.8GHZ processor
2Gigs of Ram
Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT
170 GB hard drive

I did perform a hardware check before I installed and everything was fine.

Sounds like you did an upgrade and there are some bad drivers carried forward for incompatible hardware. Did you do a hardware compatibility check first?

I just realized I bought the "upgrade" version of windows vista. Now am I screwed if I need to completely reinstall windows?