Win7 Blank Login Screen - No User Accounts (recovery/repair options useless)

[sebarns]

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting here but by no means my first time coming here for help. I have yet to come accross another forum with so many skilled and genuinely helpful individuals. I'd like thank everyone in advance for taking the time to read my post but especially those with potential solutions or suggestions of any kind. I am VERY new to IT and am currently trying to start out doing a little computer repair. My 12 year old niece gave me her laptop yesterday saying when she turned it on "it acts all funny". I hope you will appreciate my lack of details in general, but particularly regarding potential causes or circumstances immediately prior to the issue occurring.

HARDWARE: Lenovo B570 1068 (mfg date: Nov 2011)

SOFTWARE: Windows 7 Home Premium x64

PROBLEM: When laptop is turned on everything seems to run as expected (except maybe the Lenovo splashscreen seems to hang much longer than I have usually experienced, ~1-2 mins) all the way up where you would normally choose a user account and login. The screen just stays blue with no account ever appearing. The cursor is visible and can be moved. See link below for a picture.

http/i1309.photobucket.com/albums/s631/sebarns/2013-08-04T09-10-33_0_zps275a579f.jpg

• RESOLUTION ATTEMPTS:
  ■I have tried resetting the BIOS to default settings (and inspected them afterward to ensure they were correct)
  ■All 3 safemodes lead directly to blank login screen
  ■System Recovery options never appear and, just like safemode, displays a "Loading Windows Files" progress bar before ending up at the same login screen
  ■And startup repair, you guessed it, only leads directly to blank login after the exact same file loading
  ■No keyboard shortcuts have any effect at login screen (e.g. ctrl+alt+delete)
  ■I've tried removing the battery and starting it up because that's how out of ideas I am
  ■The remaining choices were unfamiliar to me and I will have either tried them or ruled them out as possibilities shortly but I wanted to get this up here asap.

She doesn't have a recovery or installation disk. I am in the process of obtaining either another laptop or HDD enclosure to attempt to recover her years of pictures she was in tears at the prospect of losing but I was hoping people here in their infinite wisdom had some additional suggestions for me to try in the meantime.

I apologize for the lengthy post but I only wanted to reduce unnecessary back and forth as much as possible. Thank you again to anyone who took the time to read/respond to my post. I hope one day to be in your shoes and be the one helping other members!

 

[fudungi]

This could be due to malware, a couple of my friends experienced similar problems. Consider reinstalling windows from another computer, and transferring it via usb or burning it onto a blanc dvd. But before that, make sure to format the pc, to eliminate the chance of the malware stealing your windows key.

Edit: Actually, if you don't want to format it to save the photos, I suppose you could take the risk but consider using safe mode in that case

 

[sebarns]

This could be due to malware, a couple of my friends experienced similar problems. Consider reinstalling windows from another computer, and transferring it via usb or burning it onto a blanc dvd. But before that, make sure to format the pc, to eliminate the chance of the malware stealing your windows key.

Edit: Actually, if you don't want to format it to save the photos, I suppose you could take the risk but consider using safe mode in that case

I actually just spoke with her mom and luckily she had moved her default photo folder to a synced skydrive folder so luckily there's no worries there. I was hoping to gain a little experience from this but it sounds like I don't have much choice but to reinstall the OS? That seems to be the consensus among everyone else I could find online who had a similar problem. I'll start researching it now but I'm assuming there's a way to reformat the HDD without logging in correct? Just wanted to confirm, thank you very much.

 

[fudungi]

This could be due to malware, a couple of my friends experienced similar problems. Consider reinstalling windows from another computer, and transferring it via usb or burning it onto a blanc dvd. But before that, make sure to format the pc, to eliminate the chance of the malware stealing your windows key.

Edit: Actually, if you don't want to format it to save the photos, I suppose you could take the risk but consider using safe mode in that case

I actually just spoke with her mom and luckily she had moved her default photo folder to a synced skydrive folder so luckily there's no worries there. I was hoping to gain a little experience from this but it sounds like I don't have much choice but to reinstall the OS? That seems to be the consensus among everyone else I could find online who had a similar problem. I'll start researching it now but I'm assuming there's a way to reformat the HDD without logging in correct? Just wanted to confirm, thank you very much.

Yup. Most times you can do it in the bios config screen