What the heck happened-after win update programs not working

Wow. In all my years I've never seen this happen before! System specs: Win 7 sp1 64 bit running on a Dell i5 w/ 8 gb RAM. I'm usually pretty careful about manually downloading Win Updates. But I had turned off my computer for a vacation (I usually leave it in sleep mode) and when I restarted it --- a number of programs gave me the error message "[program_name] has stopped working" right on startup. I These are programs that have worked flawlessly for years without any maintenance. I uninstalled and reinstalled programs, to still get the error message during the installation routine. I realized it was an issue when I found multiple programs not working and not just one. My virus checker and malware checkers seem up to date and haven't flagged any infections.

Before I resort to a clean install of Win 7, where else should I check? By the way, I am considering a "repair" instead of clean install, but I'm finding that repairs don't work that well unless you have the original installation disk (recovery disks won't do) and the problem is exacerbated by the fact that I used an Anytime Upgrade from Win 7 Home Premium to get to Win 7 pro.

The programs not working are Win7TV (Hauppauge), Memeo Instant Backup, PowerDVD, and I seem to keep finding more programs daily that aren't working. Thanks in advance,

W!