Hanging at "Starting Windows" screen

tdm · 13 Jun 2013 at 09:24

I'm running W7 Enterprise and this morning my PC has started hanging at the "Starting Windows" screen right after the startup sound is played. I'm not really sure whats going on because safe mode works fine and using the "startup repair" utility in the recovery options reports no errors. I have system restore turned off as I (used to!!) make regular backups of my boot partition to an external drive but it seems to have made a recovery point at some point this morning when it wasn't booting properly - however, restoring to this point doesn't fix the problem (unsurprising as it was made at a time when it wasn't working anyway)

Any suggestions guys?

Thanks!

satanicguardian · 13 Jun 2013 at 09:27

Have you updated any drivers recently? This normally happens when it tries to load a bad/incompatible driver (particularly if you try and use a harddrive that was booting an OS on one PC and move it another PC with a different chipset)

Try booting safemode and running driversweeper to blitz all unnecessary drivers then rebooting and let me know what happens

AMG · 13 Jun 2013 at 09:38

Hello, strange.. It seems to me that windows itself is fine, it must be a program or driver that is causing this issue.

I say that as safe mode works like it should, so the core windows is in working like it should.

You can try and taking off unneed programs from the startup as one of them may be causing the system to hang.

Is there anything at all in your error logs ? Anything red pretty much may be the cause of this.

Also you can run check disk on fix file system errors too it wouldn't hurt.

I guess you do run anti virus sweeps.

Computers are strange for one issue there may well be 6 different reasons why or all six if you are unlucky :eek:

Anyways I hope this helps

Edit as above said, keep your OS/drivers up to date as possible, and specific to your hardware.

tdm · 13 Jun 2013 at 10:01

Ok, I've discovered something very odd. Turns out I can actually get past the login screen and load programs even though it still only displays the "starting windows" screen. If I type in my password I can get onto my computer (obviously all I can see is the windows logo) but for example I can hear that skype has logged on etc.

satanicguardian · 13 Jun 2013 at 10:07

tdm said:
Ok, I've discovered something very odd. Turns out I can actually get past the login screen and load programs even though it still only displays the "starting windows" screen. If I type in my password I can get onto my computer (obviously all I can see is the windows logo) but for example I can hear that skype has logged on etc.

That is very strange indeed, if you use a graphics card, try booting the PC with VGA cable into the motherboard port instead, it could be a graphics driver error

t31os · 13 Jun 2013 at 10:54

I'd start with an "/sfc scannow" (google it if necessary mate) to check the important Windows files are still as they should be.

Then boot into safe mode, create another user account and see if the problem occurs if you old account isn't the only one available(and test if the problem carries to that new account when attempting to use it).

If you're not running the latest drivers for all your hardware, that may also be something to check/update, Windows won't be loading all of these during a safe mode boot(and you said it works under safe mode).

Question, have you installed any software, drivers or new hardware recently or specifically just prior to this issue?