Black Screen After Log In (Windows 7 x64)

Hey Guys,

Here is the situation. At my job we have a situation where when we login to machines for the first time (sometimes more than first time, sometimes just after reboot) we get a black screen for about 5-10 minutes, sometimes longer, before windows comes up. I know, if I hit ctrl alt delete and start explorer.exe it comes up, but new users don't know that and it's more troubling than being annoying. I wouldn't want to send an e-mail to 300 users saying "oh hey we know that's not supposed to be like that but do this and it'll be just fine". I checked the registry settings and everything for winlogon is how it's supposed to be.

We have our users save everything to the network, they have they're own U:\ drive for documents, so I'm guessing that it takes awhile to load everything via the network, but it still shouldn't have a black screen first. If it loaded awhile (to create the profile) at the windows screen users wouldn't freak out as much, and that would make sense to me. Any ideas are welcome, I'll be leaving work in about 15-20 minutes, but if I don't answer anything I'll be back when I get home or tomorrow morning.

I appreciate the help in advance, this has been mind numbing for me.

Sounds like a program that starts with the PC's that is common to all of them. You can trace which program on one or more machines by testing a Clean Boot as shown in Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

Add back the startups one by one until you get the hang. Nothing should startup with Win7 unless you know for sure it is absolutely needed.

If this doesn't help install to a test machine Soluto – Anti-Frustration Software which will give you a map of what's starting, when and for how long.