This happened seemingly randomly, overnight. I had left my laptop (in it's working state) to go sleep, and when I came back to it in the morning, there was no Internet connection (now fixed), I can't turn on Windows firewall, Windows restore points fail to load, and I'm unable to open the start menu and the notifications area on the lower right. I've tried everything listed in these articles:
http://www.urtech.ca...o-not-function/
http://www.urtech.ca...-in-10-minutes/
However, I'm still not able to open the start menu or the notifications menu.