I have not seen many, or possibly any of the symptoms you describe, so it may not be a Microsoft problem. Where did you get your install media? Possibly something could be wrong with it.
Have you modified or changed any folders or settings that might effect this, for instance have you deleted any fonts?
If you type optionalfeatures in the Start Menu search box and hit enter, is that the panel you show empty? And make note of the time you start the utility.
Check the Event Viewer around the time you started the above utility and see if any error or warning message show up.
Go to the Windows\System32 folder for optionalfeatures.exe and check the date and size by holding the mouse over it or going to properties. So you can compare, mine shows 7/13/09 and 96 K (95.5K) .