Windows 7 freezing at “Welcome” screen

[Skulltrail]

Hi everyone,

Got a bit of strange problem I would be grateful for some help with:

Earlier today Windows 7 froze while idling, and upon restarting it refused to progress beyond the “welcome” screen following the black screen with the four windows squares. A bit of Googling suggested this may be a problem with the user account (I have it set to auto-logon) so I created another and while it would let me change which account to log on to and enter incorrect passwords etc. as soon as it had finished “preparing desktop” on the new account it froze as well. Disk check and sfc /scannow came up clean as well.

I can access network shares from my laptop and see it as a media device etc. It will boot to safe mode no problems where I checked temps and they are all OK so I’m fairly sure it not a hardware issue. Nothing is plugged into the USBs apart from mouse and keyboard.

I am desperately trying to avoid a repair install or a fresh install of Windows as it turns out my ISO of Windows 7 is corrupt and bugs out at 87% installed (tried it on an old PC a few weeks ago).

Thanks in advance!

[DDY]

Have you tried a system restore yet? Maybe a recent windows update did somthing, like it did to one of my machines, a system restore to the point right before the update fixed it.

[Skulltrail]

Did a system restore from Safe Mode of a "critical update" to no avail, and then picked a point several weeks back and still the same problem.

[GoNz0]

use autoruns to disable startup items and drivers until it works again.

or run a SFC/scannow (i think thats right, google it)

[Skulltrail]

The sfc /scannow came up clear, I am doing the drivers now...

[Skulltrail]

Managed to get hold of a Windows ISO and installed it - its doing exactly the same thing after a complete reformat.

I am now suspecting the graphics drivers as they were the first thing I put on and it did it on the first reboot.

Will update later...

[Skulltrail]

Definitely seems to be the NVIDIA drivers - any ideas?

[kalniel]

Don't use those drivers. Try the ones that windows update finds for you.

[Skulltrail]

Windows update isn't picking up any drivers, and its set to all Microsoft Update rather than just Windows. The 460 is only supported by the latest NVIDIA driver, so it may be that's why its not there?

[GoNz0]

if it froze and now wont accept the drivers the card may be fubar

if you reinstalled it kinda add's to that theory

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi Skulltrail

Sorry to hear you are having issues with the card in your system

You can eliminate driver issues by downloading the Driver Sweeper program off http://www.guru3d.com

Use this to remove all Nvidia drivers off the system and reboot

Once back in Windows install the latest drivers off the Nvidia website (never use the generic Microsoft ones if you are a gamer)

Once drivers installed and see if both cards have accepted the driver, if they have all good but if not it looks like the second card may well be faulty in which case we can arrange an onsite to get the card changed for you if you contact us through the query system

Let me know how you get on

Regards

Ben

[Skulltrail]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the reply. I ran Driver Sweeper, rebooted and device manager then recognized them as 460s rather than generic (a step forward), and another step forward is that code 10 wasn't reported when in safe mode, but when booting normally it persists in freezing after login once the NVIDIA drivers are installed. I re-downloaded the latest just incase my existing copy had corrupted in some way but to no avail.

Now that both show up as OK in device manager do you still think its a physical fault?

Regards,

Jon.

[GoNz0]

if you have 2 cards try them on there own to see if ones faulty

[Skulltrail]

Ben - done some more testing and its back to square one, so I submitted a query on the Scan site. Will it be a Scan guy who does the onsite stuff or do you sub-contract regionally?

GoNz0 - a good idea but given how infuriatingly tight space is in my case, I'm more inclined to let the onsite gut sort it out.

[GoNz0]

scan sub it out, if you have onsite sit back and let them do it.

[Skulltrail]

SUCCESS!!!

I disabled the problemed card in device manager, rebooted, installed the NVIDIA drivers, rebooted - it didn't freeze after the logon - then enabled the other card device manager, rebooted once more and it was fine. I used the SLI green bar thing and both cards appear to be active and working fine now.

Looped the Far Cry 2 benchmark for a few hours and temps were fine with no other problems, so I think we can consider the issue resolved.

However, I will keep an eye on it as I can understanding it happening once but I don't get why it persisted after a reformat and clean install?