The nearest thing to a fix for this that we have is a users experience that
disabling all third party services, via MSCONFIG, restarting, reinstalling
Microsoft Antispyware with those services disabled, and probably doing the
initial run of the program before enabling the services again, fixed this
for him.
If either of you would like to try this, start, run, msconfig <enter>
Click Services
Click hide all Microsoft Services
Click disable all
Click apply.
Disconnect from the Internet before restarting if you are dependant on a
software firewall.
Restart
Go to start, control panel, add or remove programs, Microsoft antispyware,
change, update.
Once that completes, test whether the system explorers appear functional.
If so, go back into MSCONFIG and enable all the services again by clicking
Normal Startup on the first page, and restart your machine. Plug the
Internet back in again.
Let me know if this was a complete waste of your time, or did some good?