With my Win 7 PCs, I don't remember ever having to install any thing other than video drivers. Not saying I am not forgetting something, but video drivers are all I remember.
As for your laptop being corrupted, I think it certainly could be just a Windows problem. Different results on different PCs with the same version of Windows does not and would not surprise me. I am not sure Microsoft fully understands how Windows works all of the time? If they did, would we really need updates every couple of weeks? I think they are still figuring it out themselves.