So I have a buddy who experienced something like this a while back, where he restarted a MS Windows Server machine, and it would not get to the actual login prompt. It would just sit there spinning as if it were doing something, but nothing was actually happening. When he called me to ask if I’d ever heard of something like that, my response was a definite no. Neither of us could find anything that might point the way to a solution. He decided he’d go work on it a bit and get back to me.

When he called me back, he said he’d figured it out… or at least the solution. The cause is still a mystery to this day. The fix was to simply unplug the network cable from the network interface of the computer. This allowed it to get past whatever in the boot process was preventing it from completing the boot process and bringing up the login prompt. Fortunately for me, his issue occurred recently enough to still be in my memory, because today I experienced a very similar event on my Windows 7 Ultimate computer at home.

So I was sitting down with my son to play some games with him (he loves doing this), but the game he wanted to play wouldn’t start up for some reason. In fact, nothing was acting right on the machine. As it is Windows, and things like this do happen with Windows, I decided to reboot the machine. It took its time shutting down, and took an equally long time starting up. But it didn’t complete the process. It sat there with that annoying spinning circle, never bringing up the login prompt at all. We sat here watching and waiting for a good 10 minutes, with no login prompt in site. Time for a hard boot.

I turned off the power, unplugged the machine long enough for all capacitors to completely drain. Plugged it back in and started it up. Windows got to the same point in the boot process. No login screen. I then booted to safe mode and looked at the event logs, but there really was nothing that stood out as odd. There were a couple warnings, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Windows machine that didn’t at least have some warnings. I then rebooted to safe mode with networking enabled. This is when it hit me, because it did the same thing in safe mode. I couldn’t get to safe mode! Before shutting it down, I unplugged the network cable, and lo and behold… a login prompt!

So after a reboot to normal Windows with the network cable unplugged, I was able to get to a login prompt. I plugged the cable back in at this point, and logged in, and everything is just fine. I’ve run several deep malware scans that all have found nothing at all, so I’m relatively convinced there is nothing really wrong here. I’ve had Windows installed since 1/8/2011, so it’s possible that I’m just a little closer to needing to reinstall, as this is a record install length for my personal computers. I’ve never been able to have Windows installed for this long without requiring a reinstall prior to Windows 7, which really speaks volumes for the efficacy of this OS.

So this is just something to keep in mind if you ever have a PC with Windows installed that is just not getting to a login prompt. Try unplugging the network. I still don’t know what the cause is, since there’s really nothing in the event logs, but at least there’s a solution.