Vista hard hangs when logging in

  • Thread starter Thread starter robr
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R

robr

I performed a clean install of Vista Business and it worked fine for a
while. Recently upon logging in, the system started hard hanging,
requiring a powerdown/back on. It does this 100% of the time, the
desktop loads, I'm able to briefly click a few things, then bang....
locked. It works fine in safe mode. To troubleshoot I ran MSCONFIG
and disabled everything non-microsoft and also removed all entries in
the appropriate Run key in the registry. This didn't help either. I
also tried restoring to previous restore points that I know were
good. This also didn't help.

Next I created a new user in safe mode and logged in under the new
user. This temporarily solved the problem. The new user was able to
log in fine, then a couple weeks later, the new user started hard
locking when I logged in. I again created yet another user. This
again worked fine for a while but now hard hangs.

I've updated all my drivers (though I can't see this being the issue
since it seems user related and not a system wide problem) and I'm out
of ideas. Is there a way to enable some sort of logging so I can see
what's being loaded upon logging in? This might tell me what program/
process is hanging things.

Thanks for any ideas.
 
It sounds like your user profiles are getting corrupted. A failing hard
disk is one possibility. I suggest running chkdsk /r or a manufacturers
drive test utility to see if you might have a falling drive.
Also, are you certain your machine is malware free?
__
 
Brand new drive, clean install, chkdsk /r turned up no issues, I'm
positive I have
no malware. So, no way to log what's happening when I log in? I just
find it odd
that every profile would become corrupt after a certain amount of time
and cause
the exact same thing to happen. I had originally thought it was
related to if
I attempted to remote desktop into this machine, but this time around
I made
certain not to even attempt that.
 
There's nothing in the event viewer, but that's not particularly
surprising,
usually on a hard hang like this, even if the software is designed to
write
an event, it never has an opportunity. I'm familiar with the boot
log,
but the issue actually happens when the system is done booting, after
one interactivately logs in. From what I can tell, the boot log
stops
logging once the system has completed booting and is sitting at the
login screen. I need to actually log the interactive login when the
profile is loaded and software is being started from HKCU entries.
 
So this is still going on, but there's something more interesting that
happened.
When this occurred last time, I booted into safe mode and create two
new
admin accounts, so then when the first new one started locking up, I
could
just use the 2nd one without having to boot into safe mode to create
another one. Last night the first new account started locking up, so
I logged
into the 2nd account I had created for the very first time... that one
locks up
also!! I give up, I cannot find anyone having a similar problem with
google,
I'm just going to install XP on this machine and call it a day.
 
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