Windows 10 start-up hanging at desktop screen load after login...

Can you get to a cmd prompt then try system restore from there and also check disk?

Samuria said:

Can you get to a cmd prompt then try system restore from there and also check disk?

I will be working with her again this evening and my thought is to have her try a system restore. She would be able to access it by clicking "ESC" during initial bootup, then select the Recover option. That will bring up an HP shell that provides access to the Windows system restore (this way she doesn't have to resort to using the command prompt).

She has traveled with her laptop before and never had problems. I wonder if there was some issue with how the laptop was handled in transit. She claims that she did a complete shutdown, instead of leaving it in standby.

"I discovered that HP has it's own recovery control program that you can access when selecting "recovery"

I have have a 17" Pavilion that's 4 yrs old. If she is up to date, the recovery drive that came with the computer has long been disabled in Creators. Being able to get to safe mode is a good sign though.
I have never seen the progress bar at the bottom of the Lock screen either but I have it disabled so, upon startup, it goes straight to log-in screen (don't need to know date/time). Assuming Alt/Ctrl/Del did not get you to sign-in screen-
I would try a hard reset first. Have her hold down the power button until everything completely turns off. Take out power cord and battery, press power on for 2 sec, then off a few times (discharging memory). Wait 30 sec, plug power cord back in (no battery yet). Try to start up.
If still stuck, press power off, as SOON as the HP logo lights up. Repeat two more times and then blue Windows Recovery options will open.
I would try the easy out first - System Restore, presuming there is a decent point. Choose Troubleshoot/Advanced options/System Restore. If that fails, repeat and do a 'Refresh your PC' from Troubleshoot screen (reinstall w/o losing files). Good Luck

mrgeek said:

"I discovered that HP has it's own recovery control program that you can access when selecting "recovery"

I have have a 17" Pavilion that's 4 yrs old. If she is up to date, the recovery drive that came with the computer has long been disabled in Creators. Being able to get to safe mode is a good sign though.
I have never seen the progress bar at the bottom of the Lock screen either but I have it disabled so, upon startup, it goes straight to log-in screen (don't need to know date/time). Assuming Alt/Ctrl/Del did not get you to sign-in screen-
I would try a hard reset first. Have her hold down the power button until everything completely turns off. Take out power cord and battery, press power on for 2 sec, then off a few times (discharging memory). Wait 30 sec, plug power cord back in (no battery yet). Try to start up.
If still stuck, press power off, as SOON as the HP logo lights up. Repeat two more times and then blue Windows Recovery options will open.
I would try the easy out first - System Restore, presuming there is a decent point. Choose Troubleshoot/Advanced options/System Restore. If that fails, repeat and do a 'Refresh your PC' from Troubleshoot screen (reinstall w/o losing files). Good Luck

Thanks for your reply, Mr. Geek. I had her attempt a system restore, but it failed due to disk errors. I then had her run the CMOS level tests on the HDD and it passed. Next is to have her run chkdsk. Unfortunately, Windows has made it quite cumbersome to accomplish this task for some systems. With hers, in the Advanced Settings, there was no "Startup Settings" option. I had to have her go to command prompt and enter the "bcdedit /set {default} safeboot network" command. After that, upon reboot, the system began to start with the usual looping circle of dots... but after 1 full hour it didn't make any progress. So we shut it down. I'm going to attempt having her restart again today.

By the way, as a side problem, her video driver appears to be whacked. The visual effect she is seeing is the display is grainy/fuzzy, almost like a mesh of absent pixels. So everything is somewhat diffused. It's worse with command prompt, as she's basically seeing white lettering overlaying a light green background... instead of black. Which puzzles the heck out of me. I'll have to see about putting her into the CMOS screens and see if everything is clear. My guess is that if it isn't, that there's some kind of hardware problem versus video driver.

The grainy "screen door" effect is visible in the original photo. I've magnified it a bit so you can see it more clearly:

OK, a little more of the mystery unfolds...

When I spoke to her again, I asked a few more questions. And I learned that when she was heading to her rental car from the main terminal, the luggage piece containing her laptop fell off the cart. Maybe up from 3' high, onto hard pavement. Now, I've dropped my laptop bag from that height and not had problems. BUT... my laptop is always in a padded case. She'd taken her laptop along without a case, and tucked in her luggage. It sounds like it was vertically inserted and the bottom edge was resting on the luggage bottom. The casing doesn't show any damage, but it could have suffered a shock.

She said the "screen door" effect happens right at the start... when she first turns on the laptop. That doesn't bode well, as far as I'm concerned... because at that point, it's the BIOS part of the boot where the most basic low resolution driver is in effect. If that was fine and the "screen door" effect appears once resolution shifts in the Windows Login phase, then it could be easily declared that the driver is corrupted.

Anyway, the good thing is that the low level HDD test passed, which means it's likely there's no physical damage to the hard drive. So I'm hoping all that's going on is a bad sector or two that can be resolved with running chkdsk. And then she'd be able to roll back to an earlier restore point and boot up normally.

If you can get into safe mode OK, I don't think there's a hardware issue. You could try subbing the basic display driver to see if that resolves the display problem. In Device Manager, expand Display adapters/r-click the driver/'Update driver/'Browse my computer***/Let me pick***. At bottom of list, select MS Basic Display Adapter. This may resolve until next WU searches for better one.
If System Restore failed, you might just do the Refresh option, retain files & apps rather than trying to debug. Though this may be better waiting for her to come home, if she's nearby. Fingers crossed for you two.

Thanks, Mr. Geek.
She was able to finally start-up her computer. It was in a very strange "basic" kind of mode. A tips bar to the left side of the screen and the very first thing it prompted for was to connect to the Internet. I had her message me a screenshot... just to be sure it wasn't some kind of strange malware. Looks like some kind of initial Windows setup screen. Anyway, I was able to get her to navigate to the Restore System page and select an earlier restore point. So it's chugging away on that right now. I'm hopeful when she restarts, she'll at least have her system back to mostly normal.

The next thing will be to have her update the video driver. Maybe that will correct the display issue... but if not, she'll have to get a new laptop (old enough that service costs would exceed laptop value, probably enough for the price of a new one). But the hope is that for the time being, she'll be able to use the laptop to accomplish the basics, like making on-line purchases and doing her bill paying/banking.

Sounds like progress. I just did a System Restore this past week that failed from within Windows but the very same one ran fine from the Troubleshoot menu, as below, in case that's not how the restore was selected.

Before this screen is a last resort 'Refresh' option I would try before giving up and doing a clean install or buying a new one. Keep us updated on your progress.

^ Ah... well, the restore did fail. And that was doing it from within Windows. So, I'm going to have her try it again and this time doing it from the Windows Recovery screen as you suggest. Must be some file that's in use when the desktop mode is active.

The next fallback would be the "Reset PC". I saw this other option, where I think it restores the system back to original Windows 10 prior to all the updates, but leaves (supposedly) all user files intact. Probably not browser shortcuts, so I'll have to have her back those up separately.