Vista's Settings Randomly Changing

[Gazok]

For some reason, as of today, many of the settings that I had either changed or taken as read have changed:

• My start bar power button now hibernates rather than turns off the computer, and although I have changed the relevant setting, this remains the case.

• In UAC, the language bar has started popping up (I have fixed this using the control panel), and the alert box is using the Windows Basic theme rather than the Windows Aero theme, while the rest of the windows are Aero.

• The entire structure of the Windows Power Options Plan Settings window seems to have changed in some places.

There may be more, but those are the ones I've discovered within half an hour of noticing anything was different.

Notably, today I installed four updates from the HP SoftPaq Manager, one of which was a "General Vista Update". I also attempted and failed to run Ubuntu "Without Changing Anything" from a disc (I think the BIOS blocked its access to I/O devices)

Thanks for reading.