Firstly 2 names
Norton Ghost
or
Acronis
Those two will solve the system no restore issue for future use tho you'll need to pay for them
tuneup utilities is nothing like windowblinds (wb ),an optomization program like tuneup could be the issue if it's set to run at startup since graphic candy isn't exactly optomizing your comp totally the opposite so check your settings in that first better still make it reset everything back to standard windows settings restart comp,then run ccleaner registry cleaner it's free & safe, i'd reinstall wb not forgetting to restart the comp then after the restart i'd set it to classic,uninstall wb restart comp then ccleaner perhaps another restart then use controlpanel-display-xp theme then see what happens
ps: microsoft has a free theme called zune, although the wallpaper is absolute crap the theme it's self is quite good you can pik it up over at downloads.com