No desktop after Windows Welcome/Splash Screen

Within the past two days I have had a problem accessing my desktop. Microsoft KB correctly describes my situation: "The desktop does not load and only displays a black or blue background after you log on."

1. I have download the MS hotfix. Works once, then reverts to not giving me access to desktop.
2. If I power off my machine, I reboot into safe mode. I click "normal boot." Things work fine. But again, only once.
3. Today I did a system restore to an earlier date when I did not have this problem. Windows said it could not restore to the earlier date. (In between that date and today I removed some programs.) But when I restarted my machine, Windows gave the earlier date as the system restore point.

Still having the problem of getting to my desktop.

Any suggestions as to a fix?

Programs removed were related to two version of SPSS, a statistical program, that were out of date. I did not remove anything related to Windows or my OS.

And yes, I also did the sfc/ scannow. Nothing was found or repaired.

Thanks. Are there other suggestions?

when it is sitting at the blank screen press ctrl+alt+delete and click the task manager. then click the file menu > new task and type out explorer.exe
that should get your desktop to load up once its up check your event viewer log to see what caused it to hang and let us know what it says, we can probably help once we have a little more info from the logs.

Thanks. I think things are getting worse.

I logged off to try this suggestion. When I logged back on, my system froze at the Welcome Screen. Rebooted. Was able to get to desk top. Logged off again. Got past the welcome screen. This time desk top was completely blank except for cursor. Could move the cursor around.

Tried to follow the suggestion: ctrl+alt+delete to bring up task manager. Nothing. No response.

Any other thoughts? Thanks in advance.

You may have a corrupted User account which can be checked by creating a new User Account - Create to see if it has a stable desktop. If so set it up, copy your files over and then delete the old account placing its remaining files on desktop until you're sure you have everything.

If you can't create a User Account from Windows then boot into System Recovery Options to
Enable Built-in Administrator from WinRE to test it as a User account and if stable create a New one from it.

If that fails and you can't work from a stable desktop then work through these steps for https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219533-troubleshooting-windows-7-failure-boot.html?ltr=T

If you can work from the desktop then use these https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/220165-troubleshooting-steps-windows-7-a.html?ltr=T

Not sure whether this observation helps in diagnosing the problem but....whenever my computer is off for an hour or more, the "failure to boot to the desk top" always occurs.

I did a clean boot diagnostic as bottafetthotmail suggested. None of the services or startup items created the problem. I always did a "restart now" whenever I made a change to msconfig and always got to my desktop. That prompted the observation above.

I have not done driver verification. Not sure how that isolates the inconsistent failure to get me to my desktop.

Finally, I am also not sure why I can get to my desktop every time I click a "normal restart" when I am in recovery model.

Sugguetions?

Thanks everyone of their suggestions. Update:
1) Ran verifier.exe for two days. No warnings. No notices.
2) Created a new user account with admin privileges today. One log on went fine. Second log on, couldn't get to the desktop.

So...should I move to Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start -- as gregrcoker suggests? Or are there other ideas.

Finally, does anyone have an opinion as to whether I should unzip the Microsoft Hotfix (KB Article ID: 2590550) in the directory were the following two files reside: Srvsvc.dll and Sscore.dll? Currently I have the Hotfix on my desktop and it unzips into top level C:

Thanks.