[Vampire Schatten]

To tell you the truth I don't know much of what is wrong with it right now...which is why I'm here asking for help.

Anyways on to the problem:

The computer boots up normally as far as I can tell until it hits the vista boot up. It then sits there on a black screen with an annoying green moving loading bar type deal and under that it has "Copyright Microsoft Corporation."

After sitting at that screen for anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes it finally brings up the user log in screen. From there it seems to act normally, until you log in then it just freezes up. The desktop loads up, icons load up, the start bar and everything on it starts to load then it just stops doing anything. I've hit control al delete the first time after encountering the freeze up but then I clicked on Task manager to see if it would continue and it seized up again, not even fully returning to the desktop.

Thats about the length of what I know right now. The Computer in question is a Dell XPS 410 running Windows Vista, its not even a year old yet. We also have an External Hard drive that has been loaded down with all games and such, As for easy on transfering most games from one computer to another and to keep the computer hard drives from being bogged down.

I don't know what brought this on as I wasn't in the room when the problem arised and the last two people both claim to have done nothing. My grandmother was on it doing what she always does on the computer, and I know for a fact that she does nothing else, and thats either playing majhong or World of Warcraft. The other person that got on after that was my cousin, whom even if she did something and knew that I needed to know what she did would never tell me or anyone else the full story, she is a habitual lier.

So anything someone on this site can do to help me fix this problem and get Vista, the cursed Microsoft OS, running again as smoothly as possible...or even running really so that I can smooth it out, that would be great.

[simpswr]

Have you tried a system restore to a date prior to this happening?

[DaveA]

Sounds like a hardware driver was changed and it is looking for a good one. Check out your Device status and see if you have any piece "flagged" as having a issue.

[Vampire Schatten]

Now I know that I'm not a computer wiz, and most of the time I get by with what I do know. But now I'm not aware of any, but is there anyway to check/do either one of those without having to actually go through Vista, because right now all its doing is sitting at the Vista boot up and when it finally gets through that it allows me to log into a user name, but after that it seizes up and does nothing.

Well it just now let me boot it up in safe mode.

[Vampire Schatten]

Scratch that even Safe mode seizes up after logging into a user.

[DaveA]

Sounds like you just might have rebuild your system?

[Vampire Schatten]

Rebuild the system? As in wipe the drive and reinstall Vista and the stuff on it?

[DaveA]

Yes, but have you called Dell yet?
They may be of some help.

[Vampire Schatten]

Not yet actually. I have this nice little list of what I do to find solutions...I normally leave tech support calls after exhausting Online sources...like sites like this and my usual Computer Support friends...whom aren't online at the moment...but Looks like its time to reach for the phone...

[simpswr]

Tap F8 to get to the safemode screen and select "Use most recent configuration that worked" . . see if it behaves any better

[Vampire Schatten]

Did that and its sitting there at the Vista Boot up screen again. Time to pick up the phone.

[Vampire Schatten]

Thank you for everything everyone here has done to try to help me.

I decieded after some thought to go ahead and revert it back to how it was when we received it from the factory.