Windows 7 Freezes/Hangs On Startup

Hello helpful people,

I'm having a really troublesome problem with my computer.

Before you ask, yes I looked in the forums and all the other threads I found either were irrelevant or didn't help with my problem.

I have an HP desktop computer with Windows 7 Home Premium x64 bit.

Earlier this morning I was on my computer, and it was working fine, without hiccup.

A few hours ago, I turned on my computer and it began to hang on startup. Once it hit the welcome screen with the small spinning circle, the small circle stopped spinning after a couple seconds, and would freeze right there. I then started the computer in safe mode, where it would appear to run fine.

I ran CCleaner (because that worked for me a couple of times before), and cleaned up some stuff, and restarted again. That didn't help. Back to safe mode. In safe mode, I figured i would look for a solution to my problem, so I clicked the Google Chrome symbol in the taskbar. As soon as I clicked the symbol, the computer froze. I figured it was just something with my programs then. Back to safe mode. Now I open up System Recovery and restore my computer to yesterday. Yesterday, I tried installing Daemon Tools Lite, but that wouldn't work. I tried reinstalling it several times, thus installing the SPDT or something at least 7 times (restarting a lot). I also installed the NVidia PhysX engine and tried installing it yesterday. Anyway, I performed a system restore to a point before the PhysX installation and SPDT installs and whatnot.

Now, when I start the computer normally, it hangs at the black screen right after the Windows Startup screen (The four colored dots spiraling together) but without the Welcome Screen showing. It then freezes with the mouse sitting there. I can move the mouse for a few seconds, but then the computer locks up and freezes. Back to safe mode. However, once my computer starts in safe mode, it also freezes with a black screen and a mouse. I can move the mouse in this mode without it freezing. However, that doesn't do me much good.

What's the problem? What can I do? Please help and respond ASAP.

A few notes

- Using Ctrl-Alt-Del freezes the computer in normal mode and simply does not do anything in safe mode

- For some reason, pressing f11 repeatedly at the bootup screen has no effect on the computer.

- The computer is unplugged now, as I am left with no options.

Im not there, I can only go by what you tell me. If the problem started after Daemon, that is it. Daemon (SPTD) is the cause of many problems with Windows 7. Go to search type cmd, in cmd type driverquery, make sure that sptd is gone. That can very well be the cause.If it is there do a system restore from a week before the installation..

See if this can work for you .If it does and you can get in, look for sptd the way that I told you.
Startup Repair

Once in go back a week before the problem with System Restore.

This may help, too, If you cannot find your DVD
System Repair Disc - Create

It is good that you can work in safe mode, gives us several options.
Try this:
First be sure that you have already done or will do this, follow what is suggested by Greg.
Problem with system recovery

If that does not work we will use an approach using Safe Mode and clean boot
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

The difference between safe mode and normal mode is that in safe mode only limited drivers and programs are loaded. This tells us that you do not have a hardware problem, but rather software.

Lets see if we can find out which program is causing the problems

In safe mode set up the clean boot.

Then boot the computer if it works, fine, we know it was one of the programs that you disabled. Then we could continue with the process to find out which one.

In the list, I disabled the following 4 services from startup


Intel Matrix Storage Event Monitor
Intel Rapid Storage Technology
Norton Internet Security
SBSD Security Center Service

And the computer seems to be working fine now. I'm still going to try to narrow it down. I just enabled the Norton and Spybot services.

EDIT: Upon enabling those two, Windows froze up at the welcome screen again. Going to try to reconfigure in safe mode again now.

UPDATE: Enabled Norton and disabled SBSD, now only the desktop and the taskbar show up without the mouse, frozen. Going to only enable SBSD now.

UPDATE: I think Norton was my problem Was not expecting that. Upon only enabling Norton of the two, my computer works fine. I'm going to enable everything except Norton now.

UPDATE: With every service enabled except Norton, my computer runs fine. No freezing or anything here.