Programs sometimes don't open?

I also have made changes got rid of malwarebytes,& spybot they were in fact corrupted themselves giving false scans,secondly I did a clean install of Norton 360 ver 5 with NPE erasor still using x64bit Defender however my IE8 was working fine then next thing I see IE9 RC downloading with full security settings set right and I never requested this nor did I allow it.Low and behold its Installed NOW all sorts or weird stuff is going on I myself have really become fedup trying to make my win7 RTM Ultimate copy work securely with control as it appears I am NOT IN FULL CONTROL of my own laptop thats for sure.
regards
jeffreyobrien

I came here from Google looking for the same answer as OP. With no final resolution here and after much playing around, I found the solution to be very simple in my case, FWTW.

Like everyone, I'm running dual monitors and had set my larger monitor as default including the taskbar. Some programs simply would have a rest and and refuse to launch, seemingly at random. Changing the default back to my laptop screen cured the condition.