I read an article recently talking about the existance of "free will", which is hard to do because people are reluctant to define (or agree on) just what "free will" is. But one point that was made was that under certain definitions (involving unpredictability), a typical computer running MS Windows (or often other complex operating system) can be said to have "free will" because they will do (or not do) things which seem to have no consistant direct cause (e.g. it will save your file when you type control-S "if it feels like it").
This is because of the complexity of the interactions of all the components, and the lack of an overall framework which could place limits on how they interact. It's at the point that two computers with identical hardware and identical software can differ simply because of the order which the software was installed.
I'm also no Windows expert - I've tried to avoid it ever since the first time I tried it (Windows 2.0) and saw how much of a kludge it was. Configuration that controls animation could be in a configuration file, properties file, hidden file, in the registry, or could be read from another program's or component's configuration (which in turn could depend on another component's configuration, ad infinitum). Really, without being able to follow all system changes, there's no way to know what's going on (and even then it's iffy).
Some people take a "snapshot" of their system before installing or changing any major configuration, so they'll be able to return to a known working configuration, and try again. I'm one of them (Macintoshes are not immune to this effect, just less susceptible).
As for your problem, sorry, I'm at a loss (or I'd have mentioned something). If it were me, I'd start with a web search and figure out where to go from there.
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