Screen flicker, start menu stops after 1 seond

Windows 7, SP1
Hi
I'm having a strange problem with screen flicker, start menu disappearing after 1 second and renaming files also disappear before finishing renaming. After trying various start modes - safe, limited startup etc, I have found that if I stop the Windows Image Acquisition service everything seems to work ok. I know this service is needed for scanners and cameras and also it restarts when the computer starts so stopping the service is not a permanent solution.
I have created a second user account to see if this would help, but the problem is the same in that account too.
A system restore hasn't helped either.
There was a problem a while back with my camera software not automatically opening when the camera was attached but I can't be sure if this is when the trouble started.
Has anyone any ideas what I can try?
Thankyou

 

It is possible that your camera software changed the properties of WIA. In Services, find WIA, double-click and check that the 'Log On' info looks like in the snapshot.

 

It is supposed to be set to manual. (I trust BlackViper on services)
Source: http://www.blackviper.com/service-c...dows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/

 

Thanks for your replies.
After 2 solid weeks of trying to resolve this, I have finally solved the problem.:-D
In my first post I said that turning off the WIA service stopped the screen flicker etc but it turns out it was the Sheel Hardware Detection service being stopped that stopped fllcker. This finally rung an alarm bell and made me think it was a USB problem. I inserted a USB device in each port in turn and ejected as normal. When ejecting one of the USBs, I noticed the card reader was showing as 'ejectable' as well. There was no sd card in the slot, but I ejected it anyway. Restarted computer and everything was working perfectly, no scrreen flicker, no jumping out of start menu. Something so simple that took so long to resolve.
Hopefully this will help other people with the same problem - not that I have seen many like this when first searching for an answer.