Sluggish after login, desktop won't load, explorer.exe?

After leaving my desktop untouched for quite some time, I hooked it all up and tried to boot it. Everything functions fine right up to the log in screen; once I log in, it loads up a black screen and mouse cursor and everything is extremely sluggish to respond. 3~ minutes to ctrl shift esc to load task manager. if I wait long enough (often 10+ minutes) some things load, including the task bar. trying to get the task manager to respond to reload explorer.exe takes forever, and often doesn't change anything.

The PC will also not shutdown on its own, it just stays at the shutdown loading screen and goes no further.

Boots up in safe-mode just fine.

The one time I did manage to get most of the desktop loaded (with extreem patience and over an hour of reloading explorer and waiting) I checked and installed all updates listed. Same issue, no change.

I have tried booting with only kb/mouse plugged in, doesn't help.

I have tried google and all the advice seems to be restart explorer.exe. which takes a long time when the pc is not responding.

I have re-seated my ram and graphics card.

Running windows 7 ultimate

any feedback would be most appreciated, any solutions will be tried and hopefully can solve this problem. Thanks in advance!
 
If it boots into the Safe Mode normally, there is a driver or memory intensive program causing this issue. Can you perform a fresh install of Windows? Have you given thought to a possible Malware infection?
 
I ran AVG, it found and fixed a few errors. I opened my msconfig menu and turned off everything for start up. When I looked at my error registry there were tons, but what stuck out most was my disk had bad blocks. could this be the source of my problem? and in that case would a new HDD be required. (I tried doing a disk scan/repair) and it scheduled itself for next time computer restarts. however after multiple times of this it still wouldn't scan the disk. is there a way of manually starting a disk scan on start up?

Update:
ran malwarebytes removed two more things. restarted and still no change.

How can I check to see about possible memory intensive program or driver? (when I do get task manager to load it shows my memory usage as extreemly low, so doubt its a memory intensive program.)
 
I ran AVG, it found and fixed a few errors. I opened my msconfig menu and turned off everything for start up. When I looked at my error registry there were tons, but what stuck out most was my disk had bad blocks. could this be the source of my problem? and in that case would a new HDD be required. (I tried doing a disk scan/repair) and it scheduled itself for next time computer restarts. however after multiple times of this it still wouldn't scan the disk. is there a way of manually starting a disk scan on start up?
Replace this hard drive...
 
Update: Solved.

I was able to find the driver causing the problem and removed it. I was able to run a disk scan/repair and so far it seems no more errors involving bad blocks, so hopefully that is solved for a little while.

Thank you for the help. I will still replace the drive asap, but at least now its not such a problem I need to do it immediately.
 
Back