StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm working on a laptop for a friend; it just shuts off once the Windows logo fades, right before the login screen. If I boot into safe mode, I can get to the login screen and choose a user account, but once I click on it it shows the safe mode desktop and nothing ever shows up (explorer.exe never runs, I can open task manager and just see some basic background processes and nothing else ever comes).


I'm very proficient at fixing PCs but I'm frustrated by a couple of things. There's no error messages so no way to diagnose the problem (and I can't get to the event log), and the user has no backups and doesn't want any data lost (preventing me from just formatting it and reinstalling like I would at work, urgh).


Any suggestions?

I can get in to the command prompt but I'm not sure what I should be looking for from here.

Pull the disk, copy the data off, then reformat. Sometimes, it's just not worth it to troubleshoot it.

Yeah, it's *possible* you might be able to fix it, but consider the amount of time that would take versus the amount of time to do what Beowulf suggested.