Problems with Windows 7

Hi, I'm having some problems with Windows 7. It worked fine until now, but yesterday it started acting weird. It will not shut down correctly, first of all. It gets stuck on the "Windows shutting down ". I've waited half an hour, but now I always have to manually shut it down.

Also, when Windows starts, the notification area is messed up. The only icon that appears is my laptop battery, but then again it says it's empty (and my battery is fully charged).

Windows Media Player doesn't work anymore, I click on the icon but it doesn't do anything. In the process manager I have a few wmplayer.exe running, but I can't even stop them. MSN messenger won't work properly too, when I minimize it, I can't bring it back up.

I tried doing a system restore from a restore point from days ago, when none of this stuff happened, but it didn't change anything. I did lose a few updates and a Photoshop installation though.

Thank you very much, I'm willing to try almost anything.