Originally posted by Colbyt For some reason if you reboot and it appears to hang, walk away and get a cup of coffee. Give the CPU 5 minutes to sort the problem. After 5 minutes you might as well power down and try again. Turning it off when it might recover is just making more work. When it hangs does the PS fan continue to run?
You say you are running Windows 7. 7 came in a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. LR4 requires the 64 bit version. It isn't smart enough not to install on the wrong machine. It locked up my 32 bit XP in a heartbeat. Start > Computer > System Properties will tell you which you are running on the OS line.
The CPU and PS demands are higher at boot than at any other time. A weak PS or a dirty cooling fan can hang the CPU at boot and work fine the rest of the time. Plugging in a new one is the only 100% accurate test for the PS. The fan can be cleaned using an old or your wife's toothbrush.
I'm weird and always keep a spare PS on hand as the good ones are cheap online and expensive locally.
I took some screen shots and can walk you through taking a look at and turning off things in your start up files. It is simple check boxes and 100% reversible. I won't bother to upload them until you sort through all the suggestions in this thread.
Thanks again for the help.
I have given it more than 10 minutes when it hangs on startup.
I do have the 64 bit version of Windows 7.
I do routinely clean my tower inside and out.
I might have time to dig into this some this evening, and have pretty much dedicated my day to getting this sorted tomorrow. What I have done just poking around this morning before I have to leave is - uninstalled the Lightroom trial. Looked again at the event viewer - the only critical event was - event id 41 kernel-power. I did a quick google search of this and found some references to driver problems. Also under warning in the event viewer, I had 700 and some events of event id 14 nvlddmkm which I think points to the graphics card. So my plan of attach when I get started is:
Physically check the motherboard/video card/cables and connections for problems like stated above with capacitor spillage or anything else out of the ordinary.
Update the video driver - I have an nvidia GT520 video card that I added to the PCIexpress slot about 6 months ago when I got my new monitor. The critical event seems to point to this.
I did end up shutting down the machine last night. When I started it this morning, it did the same freeze at the welcome screen - back to the basics this is my main symptom. I then did a hard shut down, and restarted hitting F8, then used "use last know good configuration" - it started right up quickly and gracefully and everything is running fine. So after eliminating some obvious and simple hardware issues, I think my main problem is a start up problem which very well may be a driver conflict issue.
And I did find where to edit the startup files after looking since you suggested that. Haven't touched any of that yet but may help in narrowing down a driver problem when I dig into this.