black screen, no explorer.exe

My windows 7 boots to the user log in screen and after typing in my information it fails to load anything and I'm stuck with only a black screen.

I have tried to launch explorer.exe through the run screen, which I accessed by using ctrl+alt+del, but it could not find the file.

I have windows 7 on a usb, but I just got a new mobo and I'm not sure if it is set up to launch a usb on boot. I tried, but no luck. The motherboard is an "asrock z68 extreme3 gen3" if that helps at all.

So at this point I'm pretty stuck.

Thanks for any help or ideas in advanced!

I've had this problem a couple of times after doing a system restore.
Try rebooting into safe mode then log out and back in again. See if that works.

Didn't seem to do anything.

I have been trying to create a bootable disk for windows 7. I have the .iso file and used the microsoft usb/dvd burner utility they have on their store front. Yet when I boot my pc from the cd it just says "insert bootable media or device".

Any ideas on why my dvd drive may not be able to read the cd?

Do you only have the one dvd drive in your machine? Is your BIOS set to boot from dvd?
I'm a bit confused as you said you're trying to burn a windows 7 dvd but then you said you tried to boot from the dvd.

I burnt the windows 7 dvd on another computer. I do have the BIOS set to boot from dvd. I know this because I set it only able to boot from dvd to test it. And yes I only have one dvd drive on my machine.

I did just rebuild my computer and now I am just trying to get a good copy of windows on it.

Try this link:
Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO Image Downloads
This will give you an official installation disk with SP1 included.
I couldn't get the usb /dvd utility to work either.

Is it maybe a problem with how you burned that DVD. The burner program needs to extract the files in the iso and place them on the DVD. In other words, it can't just copy the iso itself to the DVD.

Also, burn at a nice slow speed to avoid errors.

Good advice from sibbil, always best to burn data discs at slow speeds.

Thank you for the suggestions and I will try this .iso. Is there anything else I should be sure to do when I burn it? Software suggestion or options that must be selected?