Ghost in the machine?

I went to nvida.com to download a video driver. They had three programs for download that would check my system and tell me what drivers were needed for all hardware, not just graphics boards.
I downloaded one of the programs, rebooted and found that all my icons on the desktop were gone. My task bar was gone. I could not bring up Task Manager with ctl-alt-del. But the wallpaper was there.
I ran AVG 8.0 twice and nothing was found.
Strange things are occurring in safe mode.
The computer will reboot by itself every 5 to 10 minutes, unless I have AVG or a browser open.
The keyboard and mouse will freeze up without anything “prompting” this. As long as they are frozen, the computer will not reboot on its own.
I am using Ashampoo firewall and it is now blocking all traffic. It did this “on its own’” so I turned it off and am using Windows firewall for the time being.
Since I don’t really believe in spirits in my machine, does anyone have a guess as to what might be wrong and how I can fix it. I am not over exaggerating on any of this.
At a minimum what caused the loss of icons in normal mode and how can I get them back?

 

If you could post the exact name of the program from NVidia that started all this, it would help. Also, have you tried uninstalling the program? Have you tried a system restore to a date before the problems started?

 

I downloaded Driver Genius from the site. The first thing I did in safe mode was to uninstal the program. I found that there were no restore points or dates to go back to.

 

The NVidia web site is normally very good.
If you register your graphics card it keeps your details on file so if for any reason you have a driver problem you are able to get the correct drivers without searching,GeForce GTX 260 and have no problems getting drivers and updates.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

http://www.onlineregister.com/nvidia/register/quadrofx/

Driver genius is a sledge hammer to crack a nut, it finds all sorts of things and if you click "install" you get all the :crap as well.

If you are using Vista you can go to "device manager" and click on each application and ask it to update drivers, it will then go on line and find the newest version for you.

 

Nah, i think its Ghosts.