If anyone has any clue how to kick this recalcitrant mule in the guts and get it working again this would be appreciated.

It is a computer I use for editing and it is quarantined from the internet. The last re-install was 2014. It has not been much used. I would like to avoid going the whole clean reinstall route, but not being able to get past the little circle which goers round and round and round and round under the word "Welcome", there is no way I can get to a previous restore point to cull out something which might have connipted the thing.

First suggestion is to unplug all non-critical external devices in case something is causing it to hand at that stage.

Andrew

try run it in Safe Mode and take a look at the device manager, investigate if the fault might be hardware or software issue, get a Linux Live CD and boot off the CD/DVD drive, see if everything loads.

Sounds like a file the system needs to boot is corrupt. A re install will fix it but usually its safest to get a new drive at the first sign of trouble.

If safe mode doesn't work I would buy a new hard drive, install Windows then add the old drive as data drive that way you'll hopefully be able to copy off anything important. Btw I always partition my hard drives so the system is on a partition by itself or on a separate drive so if you need to reinstall it won't effect your data.

I had this on one my boxes the other day. I unplugged all the USB devices except the keyboard and mouse and rebooted into safe mode using F8 and went to a restore point that was created a couple of days back. As hoped for all went well on the reboot and I was up and running. I now plugged in the USB drives and edited away happily.

Next time I went to start the PC the same thing happened, stuck on the "Welcome" screen. I shut down disconnected the USB drives restarted and bang, it fired up with no issues. Shut down and restarted again three times but adding in a USB drive each time. Voila! The box hung again on the last USB drive which happened to be a USB3 drive.

It turned out to be a corrupted USB3 driver. Uninstalled the whole USB3 Root Hub via Device manager and restarted the box without the USB3 drive connected. When that drive was connected the PC saw it and reinstalled the USB3 Hub drivers.

Since then no more problems. Go figure?

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Good idea stripping the computer down to it's bare essentials.

Had this happen recently, master boot record was corrupted. Hit F8 on bootup, select "repair this computer" and (if that's the problem) windows will re-make the mbr. It also runs sfc/scannow to look for other missing or corrupted files; won't hurt your computer if it doesn't find anything. DON'T jump into re-installing windows, you will lose your installed apps.

Once you're up and running, select the command prompt and enter "chkdsk /f" which will, next time you boot, check your disk for bad sectors and corrupted files and make repairs. You need to run command prompt as administrator.

Tiem to get SPINRITE from grc.com.

$89 download and burn the ISO file to a CD (its very compact)

Boot the computer from the CD and let it run until its finished.

Disable sleep, hibernation modes.

Longest reported working time to recover a magnetic HDD is three months.

Personally, I ran it one HDD for 23 days.

It will tell you if the drive will fail immenantly, but will sufficiently recover the data to allow copying to a good drive.

Thank you all for your helpful inputs.

The cure came in the end at about 3am this morning after a long session of following sensible and logical and unsuccessful suggestions. It came down to swearing and cursing and generally being unfit to be near as in "I'm too old for this $^#&" and wishing Bill Gates, Microsoft, Intel, et al to an unremitting eternal perdition as I got my breath back, the red mist dissipated and I could see again.

Then as I started to go crosseyed from lack of sleep, I lapsed into a rather childish fatigue-induced mindless input of a whole bunch of random keys during one of the boot-ups before chucking it all in for the night.

As chance would have it, after randomising the keystrokes again, one of my other totally illogical failed random efforts, - pressing and holding the reset button pulled up a previously unseen message which enabled me to select the last restore point and I was then home free.

I am using a OCZ Vertex SSD for the C: drive. I have since learned that these drives historically have had a higher failure rate than others. There is also an urban legend which I must look up which says that all SSD's will eventually forget everything over time. If that is the case, then my computer being turned off for three months might be the reason for the tantrum.

I was unable to get anywhere with the "safe" options. Safe with command prompt was useless because my install wants to just list the files then auto boot. In safe mode with a basic screen, shutdown before login would work but from the high definition screen it would not.

The last time my computer started this nonsense, it transpired that the video card was beginning to flake out. I am not all that impressed with the way they are mounted with no provision for extra stays or supports for all their heavy weight twisting and straining on the motherboard and the video card's own structure.

However I must not dwell in the past but be thankful for the computer's future motivations as fragile and transient as they may turn out to be.

All the best for the coming New Year everyone.