[SOLVED] HELP! Network PC boots up past XP logo then hangs at blue windows screen

Hi!

First post here :wave:

Most of our PC's are Windows XP running Office 2003 (with a view to going to Win 7 and Office 2010 very soon).



A couple of our users have been having the following problem -

1. Turn on PC
2. Get to windows XP logo screen fine
3. Get to the blue desktop background screen...........no further progress even if left for 15 minutes.

The hard drive light flashes only briefly now and again at this point. Sometimes at this screen we will also get mouse function but nothing else.

The user normally has to restart their machine a number of times to get to the eventual logon box.

Another way around this is to do a hard power down and reboot the PC into safe mode. From safe mode do a restart and it goes straight in fine without getting stuck. Unfortunately this not something one of the Directors at the firm would like to be doing every morning when they come in.

Any ideas? At wits end at the moment