anyway my laptop is possessed but like by a real lazy demon

January 15, 2018 10:26 AM

My (win 7 pro) laptop has been endlessly hanging on the welcome screen after login.

This has gone on for about 3 days now. After restart or returning from hibernation, and after login, the blue welcome screen just hangs for approximately one billion years. Using system restore to 01/11 from safe mode startup works eventually but it's not reliable; startup times after system restore vary wildly from immediate to 20 minutes. Also the program checker thingy doesn't show any program changes happening during that time.

I have gone through countless forum posts from other people having the same problem and I don't have any of the culprit programs installed, and none of their fixes have worked for me. I've currently turned off hibernation, and the computer is fine when returning from sleep.

I tried doing a windows update but it wouldn't configure properly and I had to undo everything yet again. 2 different virus scans (webroot and malwarebytes) showed nothing suspicious. The only things on my start menu aside from the system files etc are the virus programs themselves. But basically installing or updating anything either manually or automatically that requires a restart doesn't work.

what next metafilter

do i just give up and buy a new computer, this one is 7 years old anyway

posted by poffin boffin to Technology (24 answers total)

This could be any number of things and I obviously don't know what you've tried. All I can do is tell you what I'd do in this situation. I'd look at the Event Viewer and see what sort of critical errors are cropping up when I attempt to start the computer and then google those errors for solutions. If not putting the computer into hibernation fixes the problem, maybe you can just not use hibernation anymore, at least for now.
posted by AppleTurnover at 10:34 AM on January 15, 2018

Unless you enjoy buying things, there are many less drastic steps to take even if you can't solve this problem. Assuming (yeah, I know) you have backed up whatever you need from the hard drive you can always reinstall windows.
posted by Obscure Reference at 10:47 AM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: the thing is, i did a backup after the problem started. not an actual backup, rather, but that windows easy transfer thing in case i'd have to put everything on a new computer. so would that mean that whatever is causing the problem might itself now be in that backup, ready to infect any new computer with its moronic cooties? or could i take that huge 136 gig file and just put it on my old laptop that is virtually the same as the current one except with a faulty video card that i couldn't be bothered to fix. (do u see a pattern here)
posted by poffin boffin at 10:52 AM on January 15, 2018

Here's my wild ass guess: Have you considered that your hard drive might be failing?
posted by Bushmiller at 10:58 AM on January 15, 2018

Try creating a new User Account and logging on with that. It could be your current profile has been corrupted.
posted by zinon at 11:01 AM on January 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Have you considered that your hard drive might be failing?

hm i should do that chkdsk thing then right
posted by poffin boffin at 11:13 AM on January 15, 2018

What brand and model is it? If it's a Dell, do the diagnostic before boot. You should be able to get to that from the boot menu, press F12 several times as soon as you see the Dell logo at start up.
posted by deezil at 11:18 AM on January 15, 2018

2nding zinon's suggestion before you get into chkdsk-type stuff... that should quickly tell you whether the issue is fundamental to the entire computer like a hard drive issue would be, or if it's only connected to your personal user account.
posted by XMLicious at 11:18 AM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: it's an hp pavilion dv7t running windows 7 pro
posted by poffin boffin at 11:20 AM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: So I made a new user admin account and if I log off of my regular one, log on to the new one, and then shut down or restart etc it loads up fine, right away, and I can log on to my usual one with no problems. Do I keep doing that forever or what
posted by poffin boffin at 11:55 AM on January 15, 2018

If you encounter the problem again after continuing to use your original account, you can try the steps described here, which will try to convert the new account into a repaired version of the original account: Fix a corrupted user profile in Windows 7

I assume you'd only need the instructions following "My computer is in a workgroup", because if it's a personal computer rather than a work computer it's unlikely to be attached to a Windows domain. (And btw, links for Google search results to support.microsoft.com have been returning 404s for me this year, so I guess they've taken their Windows 7 content down or something? So anyways, that's why I plugged the link into archive.org's "Wayback Machine" to produce the above link to their archived copy of the Microsoft support article.)
posted by XMLicious at 12:30 PM on January 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: yeah i tried to install updates and restart from the main account and now it is Doing The Thing again, v annoy, i cant get into any account unless i revert via sys restore
posted by poffin boffin at 12:37 PM on January 15, 2018

(And if the problem were to return on the new account after following the fix steps or normal usage, your initial thought that a virus or malware may have invisibly infected the startup process could be correct, so it would be time for hardcore virus-excorcism steps like following deezil's guide and/or buying the new computer if you're fed up)
posted by XMLicious at 12:38 PM on January 15, 2018

Oh, wait—so it's hanging after login to the new account, too?
posted by XMLicious at 12:40 PM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: i accidentally restarted directly from the old account instead of logging that one off and restarting logged on to the new one so now it is once again stuck at the welcome screen, but it wont even let me log onto anything as it alleges to be "preparing to configure windows" for the last 20 min
posted by poffin boffin at 12:53 PM on January 15, 2018

By the way, there are major and extremely extensive updates that should be installing due to Microsoft's attempt to fix the catastrophic "Spectre" and "Meltdown" bugs announced at the beginning of the month (which affect all computers with Intel processors, not just versions of Windows.) So it may be the case that the update is really taking a half-hour or more to rejigger everything, after installation during the login process, and every time you restore to your 1/11 backup it has to start all over again—could the behavior be consistent with that? I don't know how long it should actually take personally because I don't have any Windows computers anymore.

All computers are expected to slow down marginally (permanently) after the security fixes are installed and this article says that Windows 7 takes the worst performance hit.
posted by XMLicious at 1:06 PM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: nnot sure tbh? it did succesfully install some bug fixes and windows defender stuff pretty much every time I've tried but it's the long numbered updates (i neglected to note them down but will do so when i give up and restore again shortly) that are having the problems. i did just let it run for about 2h the other day and eventually told me that some of the updates failed to install.

i will try the corrupted profile fix next though i think
posted by poffin boffin at 1:15 PM on January 15, 2018

My work laptop did this thing last week - it ended up being that the Dell updateware wanted to do a BIOS firmware update and it was barfing up Windows Startup.

What I was eventually able to do was boot up in safe mode (no network) and that temporarily bypassed the firmware update (no connectivity). After a restart, the firmware update thing was able to load - I let it update, and now the thing's fine.
posted by porpoise at 3:30 PM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: It looks like installing all the windows updates one by one and then restarting each time, both from the new user account only, has done... something? Something good? The startup hanging no longer happens on the main user account and it seems to be running quieter/faster in general.

So yay overall, although I don't really have a sense of what the problem was in the first place or how to avoid it in the future. alas.

Should I do that corrupted profile fix thing anyway y/n?
posted by poffin boffin at 4:21 PM on January 15, 2018

I would think it's probably not necessary unless you encounter further problems that appear to be account-specific.

If you look at the thread about those bugs, they are extremely complicated and required widespread changes. So, it's not inconceivable to me that the problem was actually introduced by one Windows update, they saw they'd introduced a problem across coputrs like yours, and then that problem was fixed in a subsequent update.
posted by XMLicious at 5:03 PM on January 15, 2018

Response by poster: anyway it's happening again and i cant sys restore without turning off all virus programs which sounds hilariously suspicious so i am throwing this laptop into the sea
posted by poffin boffin at 10:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: uh

what is a DRIVER POWER STATE FAILURE and why is it happen
posted by poffin boffin at 5:39 PM on January 17, 2018

I've never encountered that one myself but a quick google (which I'm sure you've already done) brings up a concise description

generally a driver power state failure is caused because a device driver was told to go to a low power state, (sleep) then It was told to wake up and it did not respond.

If that's true I think the conventional tech support advice would be to go to the HP web site and make sure that you have the latest versions of all the drivers available for the laptop, and install the updates if you don't.

I helped a friend with a Windows 10 laptop a couple of weeks ago whose Windows updates were crashing repeatedly and the problem appeared to be a driver or other hardware-related piece of software that had to be uninstalled, which would seem to indicate that the driver power state failure (causing a Blue Screen of Death, right?) could be related to your Windows update issues and the other freezing.

If all of these problems continue occurring, it might indicate a problem with the hardware the BSoD is complaining about—just bad luck that a component is failing after seven years at this particular point, or perhaps there's a fundamental incompatibility somewhere between the drivers for that hardware and these new major internal changes to Windows that are trying to compensate for these Spectre and Meltdown bugs.

(Or maybe your suspicions that a virus is to blame for everything is correct, if a virus is trying to mess with the hardware? Viruses will try to infect some hardware components at least, like hard drive controllers.)
posted by XMLicious at 8:57 PM on January 17, 2018

Response by poster: I actually managed a sys restore by only turning off malwarebytes and leaving the other 2 virus programs active, and then reverted to the second to last restore point from yesterday. I have to go through all the drivers tomorrow but I have a really low tolerance for trying a bunch of different things and seeing what sticks so we shall see how far I get before laying face down on the floor and awaiting death.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:14 PM on January 17, 2018