Hello all,
I'd like to join the party if I may.
I built a new machine around Halloween with a fresh Windows 7 install. The parts are here:
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/permalink/579750/575079/ShowThread.aspx#575079
The machine has been amazing. About a month ago, I suddenly had the mysterious problem where the system would just freeze, and I experienced a frustrating day or so where I couldn't boot at all. (Like many others, when trying to get into safe mode, I'd freeze at CLASSPNP.SYS.) Then, it magically fixed itself. I just booted it up at one point, and it worked fine. I counted my blessings and carried on. It continue to work fine for at least another month. Today I was typing an e-mail and it started slowing down, displaying the "thinking" icon even while I was just typing a message, and no other programs were running. It seemed odd, so I rebooted the machine, and . . . yep . . . back to the complete inability to log into the system. It's been several hours since then and I'm totally locked out.
I can get into the BIOS with no problem, and the machine boots rapidly to the Windows 7 login screen. After I enter my password, it hangs forever on the "Welcome" screen with the cursor spinning. I'm not sure if it ever actually finishes, but I left it up to 30 minutes with no luck, so if it's not actually frozen, it's pretty durned close. If I go into Safe Mode, it freezes at CLASSPNP.SYS. Same thing - not sure if it would actually get past it if I left it running, say overnight.
I've done a LOT of Googling on this issue, but there are so many posts about this out there that it's a little overwhelming. I've seen recommendation for everything from removing all USB devices, to getting new memory, to reinstalling Windows from scratch, to changing BIOS settings, to simply renaming a driver. I haven't actually DONE a whole lot yet, because frankly I'm overwhelmed at all of the options I found by Googling.
Incidentally, prior to the recurrence of this problem, I made no notable changes to my system. It's possible that AVAST downloaded a new definitions file, but I had not applied any Windows updates recently, nor had I installed any new software.
At this point I cannot load Windows at all. I am going to try booting from the Windows 7 CD and doing a repair, but from all of the posts I've read that seems unlikely to resolve the issue.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks very much!
Steve