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  • Windows 7 Stuck on Welcome Screen

Hey everyone,

Recently I've been going through a very annoying problem. Whenever I turn on my PC, I try to login and then it gets stuck on the Welcome Screen with the loading animation going on and then the OS never starts up. I did some googling and it seems like it's a common problem but there are many attempts to solve this issue with different results.

Some tech support guy at Microsoft said this might be caused by a driver. So how do I know which one is causing the issue?

Some users said that they started noticing the problem after installing the following update from Windows Updates:
Update for Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility View List for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2362765)
I tried to uninstall it but I could not find it in the "Installed Updates" window!

Any suggestions?
@Georges, I really doubt that would help. From what I understood, these are used if the PC fails to boot into the partition. This is not my case. I am successfully booting into the C drive, but Windows is getting stuck on the Welcome screen (where it says Welcome with a round animation is spinning - sometimes it freezes and stops spinning). Could you explain why you suggested this solution please?
Whenever i had problems with any windows version (XP - Vista - 7), and believe me, i had MANY, those 2 commands where the only thing that worked every time.

I had a similar problem on windows XP couple of weeks ago. It freezes on the welcome screen.
I simply inserted a bootable XP CD and overwrote the old boot sector with a new one. and performed a checkdisk after that (using the command: CHKDSK from the recovery console - Type help in that console for more commands).

At the next reboot, i was able to log in to windows again. and everything was okay.
I see... I will give it a try :)

The funny thing is that it boots normally in Safe Mode, and then after I restart I can boot into windows regularly. Sometimes I go straight to regular mode and it works just fine. Sometimes I have to reset my PC, turn it off, count to 5 then turn it back on (sometimes once, sometimes multiple times) until it finally boots regularly. Since it boots fine into Safe Mode I thought it might be some driver issue, but I haven't installed any drivers recently! Moreover, a lot of users who have this issue said they got it after they installed some Windows Updates.

@Microsoft: DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT ALREADY!
Actually I may have a similar problem. Last month, my windows 7 began to have longer boot times. System begins booting then sits 5 minutes at the loading screen. No disk activity, just the animation of the loading going on. After that it goes to desktop normally. I said I'll take no chances with this bizarre thing. I ran hdd diagnostics with spin rite 6, no hdd problems found. I then formatted windows. Installed Windows 7 Pro X64 (which i had before), and voila. Windows loads normally. Installed a couple of apps (actually tons), driver installation was smooth, system is in tip top condition. Then, windows began nagging about updates, so i said yeah what the heck. After download and installation, problem occurred again. What the hell happened? Guess an update screwed my system. Which one is it? I have no idea.
@MrClass: Actually I was thinking about wiping out my HDD to re-install Windows 7. Then I could install the updates one by one to check which one is causing the problem, and once it starts getting stuck again I could restore and hide that particular update. But I guess it ain't worth it: Takes too much time and download bandwidth! So I guess I'll just wait for a fix from Microsoft or maybe an upgrade to the Lebanese internet :)
Kassem wroteSo I guess I'll just wait for a fix from Microsoft or maybe an upgrade to the Lebanese internet :)
Both are dreams that won't happen in the near future man.