Problem on Startup

Hi! I just installed the Windows 7 RC 1 client and everything went swimmingly at first. Browsed the web, installed a few applications, started getting this installation to working order.

I turned off the computer for the night and went to sleep. Today I restart and all I have is a blank desktop. No task bar, no icons, nothing, only "Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100" in the lower right of the screen. The windows key does nothing. ctrl+shift+esc does nothing. ctrl+alt+del appears to bring up the menu it normally does, but with the same blank screen. Hitting space bar plays the exit sound for that screen and goes back to the desktop, which is still empty save for the version number in the lower right.

Has anyone had this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks!

The system may think that there is more than one display. So the desktop might be there, just that you can't see it.

See Baarod's post here. It may help:

Desktop wont Load!!

Let start with the usual first questions.
1. Did you do a clean install or an upgrade? Seems those who went the upgrade route are having some interesting problems. If you did an upgrade go back to the beginning and do a clean install (hopefully that will fix the problem). Ensure you back up anything you may have downloaded or created (if at all possible). Have you used the 'windows Key + e key' to attempt getting into Explore (File Manager) to see if you are able to backup your files.

2. Post your equipment. (Hopefully that will give some of us an idea of what could be wrong).

Thanks for the reply. I was just going to do this, but it appears my computer has restarted since I left the room and Windows is informing me that it failed to boot on startup and is telling me to run the system repair tool on the install disc. Which I am about to do.

Any more input would be greatly appreciated.

Lee said:

Let start with the usual first questions.
1. Did you do a clean install or an upgrade? Seems those who went the upgrade route are having some interesting problems. If you did an upgrade go back to the beginning and do a clean install (hopefully that will fix the problem). Ensure you back up anything you may have downloaded or created (if at all possible). Have you used the 'windows Key + e key' to attempt getting into Explore (File Manager) to see if you are able to backup your files.

2. Post your equipment. (Hopefully that will give some of us an idea of what could be wrong).

1. Clean install.

2. Since I can't run DxDiag, here is what I have off the top of my head:

AMD Phenom II X3 (8650 I think)
ASUS M4N72-E motherboard
2 NVIDIA 8600 GTS graphics cards
4 gigs Corsair DDR2 1066 mhz ram

Update:

I just ran the startup repair utility on the install disc and got a message saying it failed to automatically fix any errors. I tried booting Windows and it is no longer bootable. I am getting this mesage:

Status: 0xc000000e
Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

I'm guessing the device mentioned is my hard drive, but I know it is fine. Any thoughts?