Having startup and shutdown problems with my PC

[RobertLW]

Hi everyone,
For a little while now I've been having startup and shutdown problems. Sometimes when I try to start my PC - and recently this has been 50% or more of the time - the PC will not start up and the little "Loading windows" sign stays there forever, with the multi-coloured dots never appearing. In these instances I have to power off the PC and then select "Start Windows Normally" and then it works, for some reason. Often after this problem, the PC will also never shutdown and instead display the message "Shutting down Windows" forever. Once or twice when I've left the shutting down screen for a very long time and then tried doing something it has come up with a BSOD, which I think said "Driver state failure" or something along those lines, but it wasn't around for long enough for me to take note.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on, as it's annoying but more importantly I'm worried that it will lead to further problems
Thanks!

Edit: Also my computer won't make a backup onto either CD or external hard drive. It just fails around the "creating shadow copy" stage

 

[gregrocker]

That's the driver-loading phase so I'd make sure your drivers are all up to date, starting with enabling Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) then Check for Updates to install all Important and Optional Updates, with reboots, then check for Updates again until there are no more.

Next work through the other Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

Compare your install with the perfect install compiled in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to see if it might be improved, possibly by wiping the HD with Diskpart Clean Command to do a new one.