Can not progress past welcome screen - No Usernames

Good evening.

I have a problem with my primary computer that I've been working at for about a week now, with no resolution. I've googled the hell out of it, and have come up empty...

Some background so things make sense:
I bought a 128GB Crucial m4 SSD to replace the 120GB HDD that came standard with the computer. I ordered the kit to copy the HDD to the SSD - the cable has come in handy, I am quite glad I ordered it. I kept the HDD stored safely in case there was any problems.

I have a problem with sleep mode (S3, I do believe), where things don't seem to work quite right when it wakes back up - I have a second monitor connected, which won't turn on except for the top two rows of pixels. So, I reboot and life is good. On one reboot, it booted to a BSOD, with the following message:
STOP: c0000218 {Registry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

I could not access the Recovery partition, so I broke out the packed-away HDD and SATA/USB cable to see if I could access it there - it worked! Right away. I did a System Restore, which worked on the first shot, and life was good. For about a week.

Last week, I thought I shut off all sleep modes, and ran out of my man cave for a bit too long. Fail. It went to sleep. I woke it up, it was acting wonky, so I rebooted. The welcome screen showed up without any usernames to select. I can not log in. At all.

I tried CTRL-ALT-DEL - no dice.
I tried CTRL+ALT+DEL+DEL - nothing.
I tried TAB to cycle between selectables - it will not select anything but the two displayed buttons (
It will not boot into any safe mode.

I connected the old HDD.
I tried System Restore - it fails every time for any date in the past.

I can use my wife's computer to connect either the HDD or the SSD via the SATA-USB cable. Both drives are operating, I can see everything on both of them.

At my wife's computer, I got into regedit > Load Hive to access the registry on my SSD, and added the registry entries to enable/disable certain usernames. I reinstalled the SSD in my computer ... booted to the *******ized Welcome Screen again.

I found the trick online to change the "Magnify" tool on the Welcome Screen so that it opens the Command Prompt instead :D. That worked :D. I told it to enable the administrator account. Reboot - no admin account appears. I got back into the Command Prompt, ran "chkdsk /f /r" and "sfc /scannow" ... errors were found and corrected. I rebooted - no more Command Prompt trick, and still no usernames (I'm guessing somehow it noticed that I jacked with the Magnify).

I had very limited success with this:
I copied all the registry files from the good HDD to my wife's computer, then pasted them to the SSD, then reinstalled the SSD in my computer. All user accounts, including the administrator account, appeared on the welcome screen! Problem is, while I could login to my account, it showed "Preparing your desktop" and then went to a very plain desktop with nothing but the cursor showing. I could CTRL+ALT+DEL - It looked rather barren, and I did not see explorer running. The Start key was useless. I rebooted, and logged in using the Administrator username, which worked! but only when I had the HDD connected. It worked long enough for me to run Regscrub, which did show some errors that I did correct. However, when I disconnect the HDD, when I log in to any username, it still shows a blank desktop.

I'm confident that it's a registry problem. I'm also confident that it's related to sleep mode, and possibly also the graphics card. I would like to reload the original registry from the SSD and progress from there, if that is possible.

The good news is, both drives are accessable. If it comes down to it, I may just wipe the SSD, buy Windows 7, and move on with life. The old HDD still has all the data and everything, and actually did work in the computer. Until I went into BIOS and told it to boot to the USB port. Not only did it not boot to the HDD (via USB), now the HDD will not boot even when it's installed in the computer! BUT ... it's still accessable via my wife's computer.

Any help would be appreciated.


btw, before I get attacked for not reading the "BSOD - Posting Instructions" thread:
1. If you have not already, then please follow this first: Dump Files - Configure Windows to Create on BSOD

I can not login. Will it run from a *******ized "Magnify" command prompt at the welcome screen?

Bit of an update ... I copied all the registry files back to the SSD, and it's back to "normal" (i.e. it won't progress past the username-less welcome screen). But, I did jack with it so that I can get a command prompt to show up reliably everytime I reboot. I just promise myself not to run chkdsk or sfc.

For ****s and giggles, I tried opening regedit, which does work.

I ran regscrub, which found 799 problems. Reboot ... same problem.

I ran msconfig and tried booting in multiple ways ... same problem.

I used the command prompt to bring up explorer.exe, so I can now access any programs I have installed. I've got the virus scanner running a full-bore, check-every-orifice scan at the moment, hoping it finds and corrects the problem.

It will NOT let me open the control panel