Vista Hangs at Welcome Screen

My computer is a Dell Inspiron 1501 running Windows Vista Home Basic. Whenever I start the computer up, it gets to the "welcome" screen with the swirly circle thing, and then just stays there forever unless I hit ctrl+alt+del twice and start task manager. When I do that, it goes right to the desktop and boots like normal. If I don't though, it stays on the welcome screen forever. I realize that I could just hit ctrl+alt+del twice everytime I reboot, but who wants to do that?

Things I've tried:

- msconfig- disabled all non-microsoft services

- msconfig- unchecked all startup entries

- msconfig- boot- advanced options- set number of processors to 2 (was 1) and checked maximum memory and set it to 896 (was unchecked)

-Windows Updates- completely updated

-uninstalled anti-virus (AVG)

none of those things have worked so far

Any ideas?

 

Hi there jephph, have you tried booting into safe mode or even using the "f8 mode" to use "last known good configuration " which wil take your puter to the last known good setting that the puter ran well with !

Rusty !

 

Yes, it boots into safe mode fine. But there's not much I can think of to do from there. Last known good configuration just goes to the hang welcome screen again. I think that it still thinks that it's a "good configuration" because it actually loads the computer, it just doesn't want to leave the welcome screen.