Vista Hangs at Welcome Screen

[jephph]

My computer is a Dell Inspiron 1501 running Windows Vista Home Basic. Whenever I start the computer up, it gets to the "welcome" screen with the swirly circle thing, and then just stays there forever unless I hit ctrl+alt+del twice and start task manager. When I do that, it goes right to the desktop and boots like normal. If I don't though, it stays on the welcome screen forever. I realize that I could just hit ctrl+alt+del twice everytime I reboot, but who wants to do that?

Things I've tried:

- msconfig- disabled all non-microsoft services

- msconfig- unchecked all startup entries

- msconfig- boot- advanced options- set number of processors to 2 (was 1) and checked maximum memory and set it to 896 (was unchecked)

-Windows Updates- completely updated

-uninstalled anti-virus (AVG)

none of those things have worked so far

Any ideas?

 

[Archean]

Create a new user account and use it to login when you boot your computer? if it worked it means there is something with the user profile

 

[jephph]

Just tried that. Still having the same problem on other account too.

 

[Archean]

Check event viewer and see if something is logged; perhaps some service or driver is hanging up at startup? if you see something please give me details to work with; thanks.