Bootup stall and/or freeze

I'm running windows 7 home premium. My friend helped me build this. The issue I have has been going on a while and I've ignored it, but it has gotten worse recently.

It used to just "go to sleep" for lack of a better term, right after the widows loading screen (the black one with windows logo pulsing and glowing). The monitor would shut off at this time, as it didn't recognize a connection, same with mouse and keyboard. This would take 2-5 minutes, and then it would resume starting up as normal and take me to the password login.

Recently things have gotten worse. It still does the sleep thing (and by the way this is all random. Sometimes it starts up fast as if nothing is wrong, others it does the sleep thing, and other times it does what I will describe in a moment) but now it also will either take an additional 2-5 minute pause at the windows loading screen (black with windows logo) or will freeze up entirely at this point.

If I restart, it's a gamble on which will happen each time.

As he and I built this, it has boggled us for a while, but only recently become disturbing enough to hinder my daily progress.

Thank you for the help.

 

Have you checked the settings in Power Options?

 

All Power options are turned off. It is set to never sleep.

Are there other options I can check?