Messed up something again

Hey newbie here. I'm running Vista on an Asus G2S Laptop. I stopped one program from starting up (CheckMai) using Windows Defender or System Configuration or both not sure. Clicked ok & restarted. Decided I wanted it back & used system restore & to my luck the request was unable to restore. Figured I messed something up at an earlier date (I’m very good at sticking my nose into places where I shouldn’t be which results in trying to fix my system that I’ve screwed up ). So I restarted hit F8 started in safe mode & could only restore to one of the earliest dates. Next time I turned on my laptop it went into safe mode, went back in System Configuration & under the Boot tab I unselected safe boot, selected General tab & the Selective startup button was highlighted, I selected Normal startup which turned off the Selective startup but when I go back into the Boot tab the Safe boot is highlighted again. I can’t select Normal startup without the safe boot highlighting in the Boot tab. It does bootup in regular mode only when Selective startup is highlighted. Plus when I boot my system the System configuration utility starts in my toolbar stating (blocked startup programs) but I have unblocked the program . I checked my system for problems but it comes up clean & everything is working properly. I’m sure I did something that I didn’t mention but I was all over the place trying a lot of things & don’t remember all what I have done. Any suggestions for my dilemma.