well before I do that, slight update, was able to get my hands on vista disk just now, was able to run chkdsk through that, it did its thing, didnt seem to have any problems by the end. However, when i got into windows again, it appeared that all of my restore points have been removed.....

well now things are sorts of screwed, not sure what i did, but i started up in safe mode, didnt really do anything, restarted normally, and now the log on screen is REALLY screwed up. the little glowing windows logo and its associated music kinda skips a little, then the logon screen background comes up, and repeatedly flashes on and off the screen (screen goes black on and off).... Where should I go from here?

There's A LOT. Here's a few:

Faulting application LogonUI.exe, version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x47918daf, faulting module authui.dll, version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x4791a647, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0000c401, process id 0xec0, application start time 0x01c9c31e33ef0236.

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing.  HRESULT was 8007043c from line 45 of d:\vistasp1_gdr\com\complus\src\events\tier1\eventsystemobj.cpp.  Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services to report this error.

The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
AvgLdx86
AvgMfx86
spldr
Wanarpv6

I'm getting annoyingly close to just reinstalling Vista.....

I recently had to completely reinstall vista from the ground up on my samsung r60plus laptop after installing bootscreen vista...it completely black screen of deathed me, which is yet another problem around the logon screen, much like this...on the plus side, at least you can still log in...for now. I'd suggest you get everything you want safe from a reinstall/wuipe off that laptop sharpish.

Bootscreen vista was the only chaneg I made to my system too...

good luck chaps.

Well, I had made a restore point before my logon screen issues got worse (the flickering thing) and have successfully brought my computer back to the point where I can get to my main desktop outside of safe mode. Now its back to the original problem...

Hmmmm well thank you for all the help. You are correct in saying I have not made any recovery disks. I'm at college now, but will be home for the summer on Sunday, I figure since the computer is running just fine now, other than those logon screen errors, I might as well just not touch anything until I get home, I've backed up my important files, and I have my office disks and whatnot at home. Now for my next question. If I go into Recovery Manager and click on System Recovery (recover system to factory condition) will that be satisfactory? Or do I have to go and format my C drive first, and if I do have to do that, how do I recover from the HP recovery partition after having done that?

Also, just for future knowledge, is it possible to install windows to its own seperate partition from everything else on my computer so that if something like this happens in the future, I won't have to worry about losing all of my files? If its possible, is it reasonable?

Thanks again for all the help.

As far as bootscreen goes, I obviously don't know for sure what caused this, but it seems way too coincidental that this all started in the 2 minute period my computer was on during the initial bootscreen install....

Hmmm I will certainly do that, thanks again for your help, will get this thing fixed up next week!

I'm raising this topic back to life, because I'm having the same problem.

I have a well maintained system that is virus free.  I run Vista x64 Home Premium on an HP Pavilion DV5T laptop with 4Gb RAM.  I installed the Stardock Logon Studio and Bootskin products and noticed that I got an error while running the install.  But apparently it completed as the software was present.  I could run it and custom select my images.

However, I also noticed the same problems cited by Hazeof3DD.  My fingerprint icon no longer had any status text below it.  Also, when logging onto the system, there is a delay, some sloppy screen repainting, and then a display of a windows error notification with the Logon User Interface host.

Event ID: 1000
Faulting application LogonUI.exe, version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x4791960d, faulting module authui.dll, version 6.0.6002.18005, time stamp 0x49e040d2, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0000000000037ef7, process id 0x124, application start time 0x01cd2fc2a3d80a90.

I ran "sfc /scannow" and it found only minor issues with some fonts.

Anyway, I did a fresh boot and the problem persisted.  I am very uncomfortable with my logon process being affected like this.  So, I uninstalled the software.  An error appeared during the process, but the final screen said it uninstalled the software.  However, despite no longer being in the installed program list, the files are still on my system in Program Files.  The problem persists.

Unfortunately, I did some other maintenance and uninstalled a few programs, and now I do not have a restore point available prior to the Stardock Impulse installation.

Well... ultimately, what I'd like to know is how does Impulse fail at the installation and compromise the Vista Logon User Interface (affecting LogonUI.exe and authui.dll), and is there any way I can manually correct it?  I would prefer to use Stardock, but if this problem is not fixable, then I dread facing the loss of a full day doing a complete system reinstall (and I'd never install Stardock software again on Vista, that's for sure).

If anyone has some ideas to offer, I'm all ears.  Thanks.