Startup issues, weird freezing

[moevi]

My problem is that whenever I startup windows for the day, the following scenario occurs:

1. On first boot, Windows gets stuck at the welcome screen, with the circle spinning
endlessly
2. I do a forced reboot, on boot I get the "windows wasn't shut down normally" (or whatever it says), and I choose "Start Windows normally".
3. This time I get past the welcome screen almost instantly, and the desktop, taskbar and start menu appears normally.
4. Now it freezes in a kind of weird way. I can open the start menu, use windows search, use explorer etc, but if I attempt to start any other application, like notepad or the task manager none of them will show up. The network icon in the lower right also spins endlessly, trying to find my wired connection.
5. Eventually, like 2-3 mins later the freeze ends, everything I've attempted to start during the freeze pops up at the same time, the network icon also stops spinning appearing to have finally found my wired connection.

I have no idea what might be causing this, but to me it seems like explorer.exe loads normally (since it handles the taskbar/start menu/folder viewer etc right?) but everything else freezes.
Also this problem started occurring very recently, a couple of days ago and I've used this Win7 installation without problems since win7 was released.

 

[Carl Lawrence]

Can we have your system specs please?

 

[TVeblen]

Hello moevi, welcome to the Forum

One thing that can cause this behavior is when a device or program is trying to load at startup that is conflicting with the OS.

Go to Start > Run > type: msconfig
Go to the Startup Tab and uncheck the items there to test. You could uncheck one at a time, or uncheck all and re-check one at a time. Your call.

Restart after each item to determine if one of them is the cause of the delay.

And as LW7 says, fill out your system specs. You will get better responses if we know what you've got for hardware.

 

[Lagamemnon]

I have been having the same problem pretty much
1. On first boot, Windows gets stuck at the welcome screen, with the circle spinning
endlessly
2. I do a forced reboot, on boot I get the "windows wasn't shut down normally" (or whatever it says), and I choose "Start Windows normally".
3. This time I get past the welcome screen almost instantly, and the desktop, taskbar and start menu appears normally.

then for me everything runs fine for anywhere from 5 min to 1 hr. then out of noware the system freeze completely. my only option is to do the hard restart. then I begin the whole thing again at first i thought it might be a virus so after trying to find it but not fixing any thing i reinstalled windows completely. and still same problem I have done tons of checks on the hard drive and its fine so any ideas?
here is my specs wundows 7 home premium 64 bit Intel Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz, 3000 Mhz, 2 Cores Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GBHard Drives C: is a western digital 300 GB
G: is a SEAGATE 500 GB
I: is a SEAGATE usb FreeAgent Drive 700 GB
N: is a SEAGATE usb FreeAgent Drive 1.5 TB