Windows 7 unable to login

[Skrae]

I'm over at a friend's place right now looking at her computer. The blasted thing won't login to Windows 7 Home Premium (unsure about 32 or 64 bit). It's set to automatically login without a password, but upon start up, it displays normally past the "Starting Windows" screen, displays "Please Wait" then "Welcome." Unfortunately, this is where it all cocks out. It flashes black, then displays "Logging Out," and goes to the account selection screen. Attempting to login manually returns the same result.

My friend reports that before it wouldn't log in at all, it was having issues with the login account, and so was using a temp account, however, this started yesterday or the day before. The last reported time it worked correctly was on Monday. No themes have been installed, nor has anything unusual happened to her knowledge.

System Restores through safe mode have not been successful, and System Repair reports that there is no problem. Diagnostics have also found no problems.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[MadMike]

I think that's what it does when you don't activate it and the 30 days runs out. Is there an option to activate Windows anywhere? If not, she might have to call Microsoft.

[Pedersen]

The other possibility is that her user profile has become hopelessly corrupted. If the computer were under my care, I'd pull the drive, use another computer to copy the important files, and then reformat/reinstall.

Well, that's the simpler of the options I'd do, anyway.

[It's me]

Have you tried booting into safemode? And then disable autologon, and create a new account. Move important files over and blow away the account that is broken.

[Skrae]

Yep, the new account worked. Wish I'd thought of that first instead of heading home to get the junk for backup that wound up unused. Thanks for the help though!