Windows 7 - Login Issues

I know this doesn't count specifically as a 'crash', but I have a very irritating problem that started on my PC last night; I cannot log into my profile anymore. There are no errors, it just won't log in.

I had previously enabled 'verbose login' using UWT (I like to see exactly what my PC is doing), and I can see both 'Administrator' and my account name on the login screen, but this is where it gets interesting.... I can log into the Admin account without any problems at all, and I can log into my account if it starts up in Safe Mode. Then when try log into my account normally, I enter my password, it gets to "Preparing your desktop", sits there for about 15 seconds and returns me to the login screen. WTH?

I've tried running the System File Checker in safe mode from my profile, it said it had found and fixed a few problems (after restart my custom Start orb is reset to default), but still no luck with my profile login.

Can anybody suggest anything else? Obviously short of a format and reinstall.. Lol. I'll leave that as a last resort.


Edit: Also, just to cover the last thing I did before this problem came up: i've been trying to get ATITool running to tweak my GPU settings, I ended up try a few different things, one of which was putting Windows into 'drive testing mode'. I decided to undo that because it still didn't work for what I wanted and I had an irritating watermark in the bottom right corning that shows "Windows 7, Test Mode, Build 7600"... I just wanted to get rid of that.

Well... No luck with finding any solutions yet; I did find a similar problem to mine on MS TechNet forums, but their issue actually shows an error (link).

Either way, I found these suggested steps (which may work for my situation as well):
So, I'll try that when I get homer and see if it makes any difference.. I'll have to post back tomorrow with the results. Got a DnD session tonight though, so I hope I get home early enough to try this....

do a simple repair install... should sort everything out ..

That was one option that crossed my mind, but I was trying to avoid that due to bad experiences of the "Repair Install" options in XP in the past... Also, according to the corresponding tutorial here on SevenForums:

I don't have internet at home, so I'd need to bring my PC to work again to do all the updates through our ADSL. But, if it must be done, it must be done.

Thanks for the tip though; if the permission settings I mentioned in my previous post don't work, I'll try a repair.

Well, just in case anybody else comes across this problem, I got it fixed... Here's how:

Most of the research I did (Google) suggested a System Restore first, keeping in mind that I had been running my Windows in "Test Mode" to try get unsigned drivers to install, that made sense.

After the system restore, my profile still didn't log in properly, but it didn't kick me out to the login screen anymore... Ctrl+alt+del still worked, so I could log out again. I then logged into the Admin account and retook ownership of my profile folder, and thereafter all was back to normal again.

Hope this helps anybody else who has this problem...