Windows 7 Stuck on Login Screen

[Slyskel]

A friend of mine can't access his laptop due to this issue, and everything I've suggested has had no success, so I thought I'd ask the minds here for their advice.

When he turns on his computer and gets to his login screen, the background image appears but the login menu does not.

Spoiler

 

Not signed in

I suggested he try to boot in safe mode, but when he did, a prompt came up telling him that there a problems preventing Windows from starting.

Spoiler

 

Not signed in

I was hoping there'd be a "run recovery" option when booting up, but it doesn't seem like that's provided with the laptop he's using, so I've run out of ideas, save for overwriting his version of Windows or getting a new hard drive.

[Electronics Wizardy]

restore older backups?

 

Recovery from a win pb or install cd?

 

 

[ShadySocks]

It looks like explorer.exe has failed to launch. Try rebooting?

[Slyskel]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

restore older backups?

 

Recovery from a win pb or install cd?

 

 

1

He doesn't seem to have any backups laying around.

[Sir_TechMonkey]

Turn it on and off again! 

[Slyskel]

16 hours ago, ShadySocks said:

It looks like explorer.exe has failed to launch. Try rebooting?

We've tried that it seems to be a consistent problem.

15 hours ago, Sir_TechMonkey said:

Turn it on and off again! 

 

Of course! Why didn't I think of this!?

 

Any other advice?

[Yongtjunkit]

4 hours ago, Slyskel said:

Any other advice?

Have you tried system restore? 

 

Reinstall windows is the last resort 

[Slyskel]

3 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

Have you tried system restore? 

 

Reinstall windows is the last resort 

 

We can't access any system restore option.

[LogicalDrm]

3 hours ago, Slyskel said:

We can't access any system restore option.

 

Use Windows install media. Try either login repair or repairing whole system. Or restore. This is most likely update gone wrong. I've had multiple login issues with Win7 after bad updates.