I had to register and reply to this thread since this is a problem I have just encountered and have never seen before. Ive been a computer technician for 3 years so I was surprised to find a problem I couldnt fix. Here are some details to what exactly happens:

1. Upon booting the computer everything runs fine (but slow, extremely slow) till you approach the welcome screen. The second you press any key on your keyboard the screen APPEARS to freeze. Heres what got me, the mouse freezes, but the blinking line for text input continues to blink. In addition, pressing the power button will shutdown the computer. Any previous instances when Ive encountered a FROZEN computer, simply pressing the power button fails to shutdown. You have to hold the button in order to perform an emergency shutdown.
2. It is possible to boot into safemode, probably just as simple to login so long as you do not have to type. However, the second you press ANY KEY, it "freezes".
3. I was able to use the On Screen Keyboard provided by Microsoft and downloaded HijackThis, along with some misc. antiviral and spyware programs. HijackThis presented some confusing programs and I accordingly removed them from startup and any BHO's I was concerned with. Upon rebooting, it froze.
4. The keyboard was plugged into the PS2 slot, so I tried a USB keyboard...since it requires drivers it was not registering at the Welcome screen. So I tried another PS2 keyboard, same result.

At this point I believe it is necessary to format and reinstall, but I am so perplexed by this dilemna, what is causing the screen to either appear frozen, or actually freeze? Since no programs load by the Welcome screen, I believe it is a hardware problem. Someone mentioned overclocking and that could definitely be a cause. Improper ventilation may cause section of the computer to shutdown and/or become inoperative. Either way, since this is the #1 result on Google, I just wanted to put in my 2 cents and recommend a format/reinstalltion of the OS. Since I have yet to do it myself to see if the problem persists, it may be useless and you may need a new computer at this point.

-Armyguy

I have kind of a same problem. if you all know the little trick on automatic login, start->run->control userpasswords2. yeah, I did this, and when I try to boot my pc, it gets stuck on the welcom screen. I waited like ten min, still nothing. whats wrong? if this helps, it displays two windows for a split second before the welcome screen (and the computer beeps).

If you can’t log in to your OS then maybe it could be a problem with the hard drive and it won’t let you in? but you could try getting a 'live' version of Linux that you can run off a cd, and then try to access your hard drive, if that works then you could always try to install that version of Linux, and a version called slax im not sure if it is in all but slax allows you to install to ram if you have only 128, or to the hard drive. I hope I may have helped you, but this is exactly what I did to get my other computer to work.

I am like 99% sure it is a harddrive issue. It sounds like the hard drive is about to fail.

You will need to goto another computer and download a disk scanner that runs on the command prompt and a boot disk for the command prompt. The easiest one would be to download win98 boot disk and scandisk from win98.

run the scan disk to check for surface errors. i am willing to bet your harddrive will have a lot of bad sectors.

if not. reinstall windows. no way around it.

I'm on 50 50 agree on both no9t9 and BuffaloHELP. I can't think of any other possible reasons that could cause your problems. Answer BuffaloHELP's questions so we can proceed the troubleshooting further, otherwise if all fails, the harddrive could be failing like what no9t9 said. You case is worst when the problem remains even you tried booting in Safe Mode.

As for suggestions posted by the rest, I was wondering how would k2wl execute your suggestions if he is not able to boot successfully into Windows desktop? He stated in his first post that he got stuck when the Welcome screen showed. He can't even login properly into his local account into his desktop. Hence suggestions like click START > RUN > whatsoever would not possibly work.

Similar problem and SOLUTION!

Problem:
computer got really slow and then blue screened and immediately shutdown on its own. I was able to read "ntfs.sys" before it shutdown. I believe this was caused by a bad connection btwn my laptop and my laptops hdd. I know it is a sketchy connection and I had just moved it when this happened. Every time since when i boot i get to the welcome screen(i only have one user and no login screen) and it freezes. I left it on overnight last night and nothing happened.

my solution:
I took a XP install cd and went into the recovery console. I replaced the ntfs.sys file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers with one from the cd. but that didn't solve the problem. I then went back into the recovery console and ran chkdsk with the repair flag which i belive is \r. It took a while and jumped from 75% to 50% twice but it SOLVED IT. I read a few posts about this happening in laptops and i believe it has to deal with the hdd jolting around and data skipping out or something like that.

well there ya have it.

I highly suggest backing up your stuff incase it happens again.

I have come across this before but I have one question, does it freeze the moment you touch a key, or after you release it? If after, then try to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del twice and see if you can get into the administrator account or something. Next suggestion: If it’s a desktop, disconnect your dvd drive/ cd-rom drive, or whatever cd thing you have and start it up. If that still doesn’t work, disconnect your hard drive and clean out the contacts, then reconnect it. My last suggestion would be to load the system setup in the beginning of the computer, usually by pressing F1, check to see if the “slaves” and “master” drives look accurate. Well, that’s my 2 cents, see if it works!

It happened to me a while ago and what i did was i pressed alt+ctrl+del at the welcome screen and windows booted
normally.

-Broy

I have exact same problem and no solution. Just happened to me yesterday after I removed an old version of Microsoft Office. I only had Word, Excel and Power point installed, but it was from MC Office for Windows 98. I installed it about 6 months ago. I recently got a legitimate copy of Office 2000. I uninstalled the old MC Office and restarted when I was prompted rather than wait later.

Ever since I get the welcome screen but no way to login with my password. Tried safe mode F8, but I can't log in. Mouse cursor still moves on welcome screen.

I never made a start up disk (be gentle).

-Brian