I've looked at the other posts like this, but nothing seems to be the same as the issue I have.
Until last night, my machine was fine - Note: I think there was an auto windows update last night .
So, I booted up and logged in as usual today, only to get to when windows starts, nothing loaded, just a black screen with a cursor! I pressed Cnlt-Alt-Del and got task manager up, there was only a handful, say 7 processes running! - I ran exlporer.exe, and to my suprise, it all loaded. I looked online for an answer, and found something about running SRC? or something that checks and restores your processes... ran that, rebooted, same black screen after login, but this time a whole list of processes! C-A-Del again and ran Explorer. and everything seems to be ok again.
I ran a few games, they were fine, ran Second Life and it come up as a border with nothing inside (no welcome screen.) ... You know when there's a gfx problem and you move the box and you get the destop behind it smearing all over, as you move it.
Same for any videos I run, they opem, with sound, but it's just a border, with nothing but a snapshot of the desktop showing through from underneith.
So.... I tried reinstalling my NVideo driver, and codecs. No help. - I'm thinking it might be something to do with the way the gfx card draws overlays.
My problem is this, I still get a black creen after I login, and when I run Explorer.exe, I get everything seemingly as normal, except videos (overlays.)