Awesome, I think you might be on to something Captain Jack! When I ran the SFC /SCANNOW it said it found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. It then gave a log of it in C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log which at the bottom there was a very long list of things from 1/13 that the scan tried to repair but was unable to. They look something like this:
2011-01-13 16:35:14, Info CSI 0000058f [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:24{12}]"viewprov.dll" of Microsoft-Windows-WMI-View-Provider, Version = 6.1.7600.16385, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_INTEL (0), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch
2011-01-13 16:35:14, Info CSI 00000590 [SR] This component was referenced by [l:202{101}]"Microsoft-Windows-Foundation-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.7600.16385.WindowsFoundationDelivery"
2011-01-13 16:35:14, Info CSI 00000591 Hashes for file member \??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wbem\viewprov.dll do not match actual file [l:24{12}]"viewprov.dll" :
Found: {l:32 b:ZhuWbMjx/nB0UpouuW1OXEEKPOJ8Dw06tHdt6uaE3kQ=} Expected: {l:32 b:wpK7+YiOW+XHqQ7DjluzOb3VP13lpi7L8RUgP10Z+pQ=}
There were a few hundred of these...
In the instructions it said if it was unable to repair the files I should do a system restore, which I did but it didn't go back far enough. Does this mean I need to re-install windows?