Laptop issues

[A_A_G]

I've got two issues that I can't figure out on an old gateway laptop running Vista.

1st - After it boots up, gets to the start menu, and enter my password, the screen goes black. After a few seconds I hit control/alt/delete, click file run and type "explorer.exe". After doing this, everything works fine and the screen re-appears.

2nd - Cant see any video through Itunes/Windows Media-player/watching a dvd movie. I can ONLY hear the audio from those files.

Any ideas?

[Ratt]

1st may be that for some reason explorer.exe may have been knocked off the startup list.

2nd may be video driver issues.

All your windows updates done? Flash? Java? All up to date?