Massive Pile of Unidentified Problems After a Driver Update

first, here's the machine:
vaio vgn-fw230j
vista 64bit
core 2 duo
3gb ram
idk what else i should list

here's the story:
a couple days ago i updated drivermax which updated two drivers on my laptop
one for the intel ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI controller (version 11.0.0.1032) the other for the mobile intel 4 series express chipset family (version 8.15.10.2555)

so after all the updating, i rebooted. after the reboot, i got a prompt to update flash player, and so i did.

after that, i began having problems, so the culprit must be one of the 3 updates.

the first problem i found was that IE9 could not open properly. it kept crashing and saying that something caused the site to be unable to be opened and then kept recovering. so i went on chrome, which seemed to work fine except for a couple of pages on msn in which everything but the navigation bar and banner were blank. after attempting several solutions i discovered that uninstalling IE9 and reverting to IE8 worked, but after reinstalling IE9 it died again. 64bit worked fine and only the 32bit is screwy. after checking the use software instead of gpu acceleration box, the 32bit worked. after the uninstallation, i lost the norton search bar and safe web functions and don't seem to able to restore them.

second problem i then discovered, but probably not related to my main problem, is that i could not do a system restore. i tried to restore via drivermax, but after the reboot, it said there was an error and nothing was changed. then i tried to restore normally through vista and noticed i have no restore points before the drivermax update. i noticed in msconfig that volume shadow copy was stopped but it was still enabled(which idk whether is normal or not). in the end, i got the same error. i've also tried rolling back the driver via drivermax,which said it was successful but nothing actually changed as the version number remained the same. i tried to rollback the driver through properties, but it was grayed out. then i tried to install older versions of the driver through drivermax and it only said that it was an invalid version for my hardware. i tried to look on intel's site and found it very confusing as to what the drivers were for and didnt want to risk further damage, so i didn't use their downloads.

last problem which relates back to the original problem is that i couldn't play any video files. i have tried mp4 and mkv files which result in wmp error saying my computer is low and memory and that i need to close some programs (error C00D11C6). my laptop is usually at 50-60% used ram and i run videos fine like that. my ram was just as usual when i got the error, so the prime suspect is once again the chipset's driver. i also tried playing videos in media player classic, but it just gives me a black screen and won't play as well.

so any clues on how to fix some of these?

im pretty frustrated at adobe, driver max, intel, and MS. dunno whose fault it is but im sleepy right now, so i'm just gonna blame them all. please forgive my wall of text and thanks for reading this far.

ps i've been occasionally using scf /scannow and it always says there are problems it couldnt fix and that i should refer to the log file or w/e it is. i couldn't find it and gave up trying to fix it. any pointers here?

EDIT:
just went to the computer performance rating thing and it said new hardware was detected and that i should refresh my score.
my old score for graphics was 3.9 and gaming graphics was 3.7.
my new score for graphics is 3.4 and gaming graphics in 3.6.
losing graphics power is probably a bad sign...
i also forgot to mention that i used intel's driver detecting utility thing and it said my driver was current.

 

i seem to have fixed the main problem by uninstalling the chipset's driver. after reinstalling and updating it, IE9 32bit now still works fine and can use gpu acceleration while wmp can once again play videos.
the norton stuff suddenly became available to IE 32bit again, but not the 64bit(although idk if it was ever on the 64bit because i don't use that)
windows experience index remains in its dropped state, but it seems that it's meant to be that way. as after the uninstallation, it said to refresh my score again, but after updating again, it showed the numbers to be up to date. after running it again, i still got the same numbers.

at the moment, it seems only the sfc /scannow and system restore issue remain.
for the most part, i guess the point of this thread has been fulfilled without anyone replying, so i guess we can just pretened this thread never happened...unless someone would like help me fix the two remaining issues.

 

my laptop has integrated graphics and in the device manager, mobile intel 4 series express chipset family is listed under display adapters.
as i said in my second post, the graphics problem seems to be fixed. i uninstalled it and updated through intel's site. the update they provided was for the "i" series processors, which is why i said intel's site was confusing, but i guess my core 2 duo should be the same as i5 after the rebranding. i went ahead and updated anyways and it's been working fine.

as for the system restore, i have no clue what's wrong or what to do.
i checked just now and it seems that i have absolutely no restore points...
while i was fixing the graphics problem, i still had the ones created during the incident, but there were no restore points prior to it.
while the restore points were still there, i tried a few of them and everytime i would get an error after the reboot. in the end it says nothing was changed.
i use both ccleaner and glary utilities too clean my system up, but i don't think they would wipe my restore points.
could this be a problem related to the problem that the system file checker can't fix?

EDIT: i made a restore point and then tested ccleaner and glary. neither deleted my restore point. then i hibernated and resumed to see if that's when my restore points disappeared, but it was still there. finally i actually did a system restore with that restore point but got the same results. upon rebooting and logging in, it gave me this message:
"system restore could not complete successfully. your computer's files and settings were not changed.
Details:
an unspecified error occured during system restore."
volume shadow copy is still enabled, but stopped. not sure if that's normal.