Every so often, when I boot Vista, I get to the login stage, and after the login is complete, I get a black screen.

I can open Task Manager, and run individual tasks using it, but otherwise, these features are missing:

     No taskbar
     No wallpaper
     No right-clicking on desktop
     Windows key not functioning
     No apps are running, apart from those required to use Task Manager and view files

I do not try to run anything else, because I have no idea why it happens. It just does... =/

Can any one indentify the problem here? Also, could anyone provide help as to how to prevent this? It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, -AC

Have you tried leaving it for a length of time (say 10 minutes) to see if the task bar etc eventually loads? I had a problem with XP and Vista doing the same thing, it turned out to be network shares causing the problem and it would time out and load eventually. Once I got rid of all the network shares from My Computer and other networked items that try to load on login it was perfect.

What is your hardware?
What does the event log show after this happen?

I left it for 30 minutes, still to no avail... =/

Also, network shares? Could you possibly elaborate that for me?



I'm running an Acer Aspire 5735 laptop, with Vista Basic. (It's awesome [^.^])

I did not think to check the log, because it happens intermittently... *Slaps face in self-disgust*

If you have a mapped network drive, or a shortcut to a program that loads over a network device on login, that will cause it to hang if the device isn't available or just can't connect.

Also, VMWare can cause hanging at boot occasionally. Try disabling all VMWare services if its installed, and loading them only when you want to use VMWare. You could do the starting bit in a BAT file if needed, thats what I did in the end. Disabling has to be done through services.msc.

The mapped drive is probably what does it... I'm gonna take a look at it later.

Disabling VMWare is a good idea. I have done that now, thanks for your help.

Another question: where can I find my last Physical Memory dump in Vista?

If your computer isn't doing a physical memory dump when this happens, and it sounds like it isn't, they aren't going to help you.

Just wait for this to happen, then power your computer off. Reboot and read through the event logs to see where in the boot process it stopped, compare that with the logs from a successful boot and you should be able to determine what is causing the problem.

are you sure explorer.exe is running (and not corrupted)?

It'll definitely be what does it if you have one. Like I said I had the same issue on both XP and Vista, it takes about 5 minutes to time out, but it didn't always load explorer when it was done.

I've worked on various small business's computers for years and never seen mapped drives cause this issue between all combinations of different versions of Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP). I'm not saying it doesn't exist, just that it must not be too common. Perhaps updating both the machines will solve the problem?

I have seen a problem where some unusual misconfiguration, while connected to a domain controller (Server 2003) and using roaming user profiles, the clients (XP) would take 5-15 minutes before they would time out and load Explorer.

Both my machines were up to date, it was because the mapped drive couldn't connect. It sat there trying to connect, and eventually timing out and allowing the thread (explorer) to carry on loading as normal. If it can connect, then it used to load up fine no problem.

That's unusual, usually it just boots and gives an error about not being able to remap drives in the taskbar.

You could delete the mapped drives, unless you have some application that relies on information from them, and then just create shortcuts to their locations on your network? Create a new shortcut and aim it at "\\[computer name]\[share name]" OR "\\[ip address]\[share name]" ex. \\server\shared

Don't use the IP address unless it's static otherwise it will at some point change and your shortcut won't work anymore.

Thats what I do now. The mapped drive was for a NAS I had set up which I no longer use. Mapped drives are just quicker ways of using \\server\share really, just has the unexpected side effect.