Start up problem - sticks at usernames screen

Hi, hope someone has some clues on this, not sure what info is needed or relevant so if I miss anything then I'm sorry and I will fill in and please ignore anything irrelevant.

System has 2 hard drives in which boot independantly, ones in 32 bit windows vista, the other 64 bit windows vista home premium- only reason for 2 is that when machine was upgraded last year (which essentially meant almost everything was replaced!) there was data on original hard drive so pc builders put original hard drive in on dual boot so I could access it all with the intention of removing op system and turning it to a storage drive when finished (never got round to it though). It automatically boots to the 64 bit drive unless overridden at start up.

The problem is with the 64 bit hard drive boot.

Yesterday all was working fine, only thing done on machine yesterday was check facebook, download emails and run a full virus scan (Kaspersky). Shut down after scan had completed this morning (ran overnight, had halted at about 80% because machine put itself to sleep too soon so completed this morning) and restarted. Appears to start okay, gets to the screen with the 3 user images on it and stops.

So I have the screen with the 3 usernames showing, 2 of these users have passwords (mine and hubby's) the 3rd has no password (kids account - rarely used account) but clicking on anything does nothing - it should bring up the log in screen but nothing happens. The images do become highlighted but the log on does not appear. Same goes for the accesibility button on the bottom left of the screen and the shut down options on the bottom right - just no response.

The hard drive activity light is on and flickering though, have left the machine for up to half an hour and the light is still flickering but everything is still unresponsive.

Trying to go into safe mode does exactly the same - stops at the user names screen and is unresponsive.

Have tried last known good and that didn't change anything.

Any ideas of what I can do?

Welcome,

Try a clean boot see what happens.
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

Go to event viewer and see if that gives any information.

Using the 3 finger salute, alt, cntrl, delete, bring up task mangager and see what is running at the problem juncture.

Run memory diagnostics and see if memory usage may be a problem.

CTRL+ALT+DEL do nothing from the usernames screen that it's stuck on I'm afraid.

The instructions for a clean boot require me to log in but I can't log in at all - I am stuck at that screen with all the usernames showing but clicking any of them fails to bring up the actual log in screen, just nothing happens when I click the usernames.

I'd love to be able to get in to view event log

Possibly silly sounding question now - how do I run memory diagnostics? I do have the vista dvd.

Hello Caracara,
Follow this tutorial, it will check your file system and try to repair any damaged files.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

Hope this helps, good luck and post your results.

Give the startup repair a try, see if that helps.

Just after I sent that reply hubby phoned from work and I mentioned the pc was refusing to turn on and he tells me that when he did his emails last night the keyboard was acting odd. It hadn't done anything odd for me so whether this is connected to his user account I don't know.

Anyway, with that info I whipped out the keyboard (and mouse, in fact everything connected except power, monitor and speakers lead), plugged in the old ps2 mouse and keyboard from kids own pc (old knackered model but it plays their educational software fine) restarted the machine using reset again and viola I got a response when I clicked my username and it let me log in but hung for a while at the welcome screen (little swirly circle swirled for a long time - please excuse lack of correct terminology, I am a whizz with databases and php but not pc hardware or operating systems - sorry) though did eventually load all be it very slowly.

So I shut down again and took out the PS2 mouse/keyboard and reattached the receiver for my wireless mouse and keyboard (combination, one receiver for both) and restarted. It has let me log in but is acting very odd

- Hung at welcome for several minutes
- Took forever for desktop to load properly
- Keeps randomly going to the switch windows bit (vista aero where it shows all windows in middle of screen) of it's own accord
- Hard drive activity light is continuously flickering and I can hear it whirring

So we do still have a problem. but I have managed to get in, touch wood that stays the same. Thankfully I do have a full back up of files but emails etc I don't and I have no idea how to back them up anyway (short of saving each one individually and there are way too many to do that with)

If you are using windows mail, go to file and export and messages.

It's Outlook, I think I've found instructions on the net and am trying them now before I start trying to fix this machine

Thanks for all your help and ideas, I think it's running okay now.

Once I worked out that it wouldn't start up with the wireless receiver for the keyboard/mouse plugged in but would with the ps2 versions attached I got into event log and found 1 program that was trying to fire at start up but failing, removed this (it was network software that I am not even using at the moment and haven't since Christmas) and the general load time improved but it still stuck at the usernames screen if the wireless receiver was attached. Bit more digging and I found a logitech update to the keyboard/mouse software that had tried to install a couple of days ago and been aborted/failed for some reason. Allowed that to run through properly again and hey presto the system will now fire up properly with the wireless recevier attached and we're running again.

No clue as to why this all kicked in this morning when 1 thing had been happenning for a while and the other happenned a few days ago (and the machine has been shut down and restarted several times since then) but it seems something must have caused them to combine to cause the problems on start up today, even though I can't identify what.

But at least I now know how to back up my outlook files (and would never have guessed it was that easy ) and am working through msconfig now to get rid of other stuff that is starting up that doesn't need to.

Glad that it all worked out.