Issues with Google and Windows 8

Hey everyone... So, I’ve been running Windows 8 on my laptop and honestly, everything was smooth sailing until today. Yesterday I decided to install Google Earth, which seemed fine at first, but now things have gone completely sideways. Basically, when I boot up Windows 8, I hit that main interface where all the icons should be, but there's absolutely nothing there—it's just a blank void. I can barely even make it to my desktop without using some sort of workaround... On top of that, Google Chrome has stopped working entirely, and the same goes for Microsoft Word and even my photo viewer...

Now, why am I bringing up Google Earth specifically? Well, I have Norton Antivirus installed, and the only error that popped up during a full system scan was tied directly to that Google Earth installation. I tried to just uninstall it and get it over with, but I kept getting this error message: "Failed to extract Dll.ini file from the binary table." It really feels like something went wrong during the setup, and maybe I accidentally picked up something nasty while downloading it... I did find a potential fix online, but the very first step requires using Start - Run, and since my system seems to be totally locked down right now, I can't type anything into that "Run" box... Does anyone know an alternative way to handle this? It's kind of urgent because I'm heading out on a trip in two days, so any help would be greatly appreciated...

EDIT: Oh, and I should mention that Microsoft Excel and Internet Explorer seem to be working perfectly fine... Aside from that, I tried to reinstall Google Chrome, but the automatic download just won't trigger when I try to run the installer...

just grab Revo Uninstaller and use it to wipe Google Earth out...

Where did you grab the installer for Earth from? You might want to try running a system restore back to a point before you even attempted the installation.

Just do what mr-crime suggested, then run a cleanup with CCleaner and Malwarebytes.

Andrew Peterson12 said:Try following those steps suggested by mr-crime, and once you're done, run a quick sweep with CCleaner and Malwarebytes just to be safe...

The real headache here is that I can't even get a single program to download right now; nothing starts downloading at all, whether I try to trigger it manually or let it happen automatically like it usually does when everything is running smoothly...

Using System Restore seems like a solid plan, but I’m running into a bit of a wall here—I can't even get the search bar to pull up System Restore, or honestly, anything else for that matter... It's making things pretty difficult. Is there any way to actually reach System Restore in Windows 8 without relying on that search function? Maybe through the Control Panel or some other route... I'm really looking for a way where it's just a matter of clicking my way to the destination, nothing more...

So, if you look right here, you've actually got two different options to choose from
System Restore

Jack Alvarez said:Well, you actually have two options right here...
System Restore

Managed to track them down and get everything sorted out... Thanks a million for the help, everyone!