Windows 7: Desktop and profile will not load

Dear Forum Users

I will apologise in advance for my lack of technical knowledge but I really need your help. It is a bizarre story, so here goes.

I left my laptop on while away for a couple of hours. I returned and was greeted with a black screen but the laptop was whirring away as if it was working as normal. I had no choice but to do a hard shut down. I started the laptop again and was directed to Start Up Repair. I ran this to no effect at all and I got stuck in the 'Start Up Repair Loop', which I managed to resolve using the great tutorial on this website. However, another problem has occurred.

When Windows loaded it brought me to my log in screen but my User Profile Name was missing. The password box was there and I managed to log on to my desktop. However, the taskbar loads but does not work, the desktop clock is missing and the icons on my desktop exist but do not load, nor do they have any titles. The Windows key does not pop up the start menu, so I had to do Ctrl Alt Delete to perform a shut down. I tried rebooting but the same thing happened. I tried booting in safe mode and this did not work either.

I was wondering if you could shine any light on this situation? The laptop is a Samsung with pre-loaded Windows 7 Home Premium. I apologise if this has been dealt with in another thread but I wasn't sure of what technical terms to search for.

Best wishes

Lynsey Shaw

P.S. Just tried doing a basic restore, which did not work and tried restoring it from a restore point, which also failed to solve the problem.

That's what happened to me. (sorta) i don't know if it will work but bring up an elevated command prompt.
To do this:
Hold the Windows Key and push R
then type in cmd
Hold down Shift and Control, and push Enter.

a black window with some stuff in it should pop up.
type in sfc /scannow

Let that run, should take a little while, see if that fixes it

Ok, so when I load the elevated command prompt box it loads it but I cannot see it. The icon appears on the taskbar and I can't click it. If that makes any sense?

I tried to do it from Command Prompt on the System Repair tools using the following command: sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows

It begins the scan but then goes on to tell me that Windows Resource Protection wont perform the scan.

Thanks for your help but it didn't work :-(

Giving this a bit of a bump because I am really desperate. Can anyone shine a light on this? If not, I plan to take it to a repair store today.

Hi.

Please don't waste money on a repair shop - I've asked our installation guru (Greg) if he can help. Lets see what he suggests.

Regards,
Golden

Thank you so much Golden! I hope he has some clues :-)

You'll need to work in boot mode until you can disinfect and repair Windows 7 enough to see if it will boot again.

Everything possible that can be done is here: Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot.

The steps lead up to if necessary rescuiing your files and either running Factory Recovery or doing the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

Factory Recovery steps for Samsung are here: How To Perform A Complete Restore Using Samsung Recovery Solution 5 my samsung. Let us know if you have a different Samsung model.