So i'm connected to the internet, all is well. Suddenly, my taskbar/toolbar disappears along with multiple icons in the task bar...then a small box appears in the top left corner of my screen and it flashes for only a moment. I can make out the top line "Setting up personalized settings for..." followed by a folder address...and then the box disappears. All icons in the taskbar are reloaded and the connection resumes. It's really annoying...it's happened 6 times while i've been typing this post. Can anyone help? I've also been having troubles connecting to WiFi...the connection searches for an IP and times out after 30 or 40 seconds and i get a limited or no connectivity notice.

Sounds like a registry problem. You have probably picked up something nasty off the internet. Terminate explorer.exe and I bet the problem goes away, of course then you can only start applications from the command line. I had a problem something like this and I just went ahead and reinstalled Windows...more than a few times.