Hi all,
Upon booting up my laptop, everything seems fine at first. My desktop loads as does any startup programs as normal for a good few minutes until the startup procedure is finished, then simultaneously any programs I have open fail to respond and after a few more minutes my operating system fails to respond. Between the time of the programs and the operating system failing to respond, I cannot execute any other programs nor can I lauch task manager (CTRL+ALT+DELETE etc.). A while after the operating system fails to respond this error pops up, no doubt as a response to me trying to open task manager:

"Failure to display security and shut down options. The logon process was unable to display security and logon options when CTRL+ALT+DELETE was pressed. If the operating system does not respond, press ESC or restart the computer by using the power switch."

All this occurs without fail everytime I boot up as normal.

I can boot up my laptop in Safe Mode with success which has allowed me to try a number of things but I am no computer tech so my knowledge is slim to none. These are what I have tried:

1) I have run anti-virus and anti-malware programs which came back clean.
2) I have tried to go back to a system restore point but apparently I have none.
3) I have tried a clean boot up (with only Microsoft start up procedures) but did not help, just made my OS fail to respond almost instantly as my desktop loading instead of after a fair amount of time.
4) I have 'restarted winsock' on a forum suggestion from another post it may be a particular virus and rebooted but this did not help.
5) I have turned off UAC and rebooted incase something was making changes causing Windows to fail to respond from another forum suggestion. This did not help either.
6) Rebooted with last known working configuration option.

I should also point out I have not recently added any hardware or software that could make this occur. However, maybe the last 3 things I did before the problem occured could help explain. Firstly, I ran a full anti-virus scan with AVG which removed a rootkit and deleted something 'malicious'. After that I used AVG PC tuneup to clean the registry, defrag and clear junk files. Lastly, I tried to run Steam which froze on an update and I tried to restart my laptop, which froze on the "Logging off..." screen for ages by which time my laptop battery must have died. After this the problems arose.

I really want to avoid anything which might have to result in my reinstalling Windows 7 as my laptop came with it pre-installed so I do not have a Windows 7 disc or a OS backup.
I would really appreciate some help here because my laptop is important for my studies and I'm a tad computer illiterate. Thanks for reading this essay of a problem, especially since I have no idea what topic to class this as.

Laptop:- Sony Vaio VPCEA3M1E, Intel Core i3.
OS:- Windows 7 64bit Home Premium

Cheers,
Ryan.

Because booting in Safe Mode works, do this:

Boot in Safe Mode.
Run/search/open MSCONFIG.
Disable all Startup items. See Startup Tab.
Boot normally.
If OK, Run/search/open MSCONFIG.
Enable ONE startup item at a time.
Boot.
Repeat process until failure. The last item enabled prior to failure is the culprit.

If disabling ALL Startup items does NOT boot successfully, repeat the procedure on the Services tab.

MSCONFIG is limited in scope. It is a troubleshooting tool ONLY. If the procedure employed here is successful, there is a better way of making the repair permanent. It may be necessary to run MSCONFIG as an Administrator.

Thanks for responding. I tried this when performing a clean reboot without startup items or sevices except for Microsoft services and results were the same but the OS failing faster. Not sure whether I should try with Microsoft services disabled though but I do not want to escalate things.

Great minds... Disabling the MS services may or may not yield a different result.

I encountered this error previously but I do not recall the solution. You may be fully qualified to use a better tool than MSCONFIG. See Autoruns
Run this app as Admin.

The fact remains - booting in Safe Mode works. Something is pigging the process and it is not your core installation. I suspect the anti-virus, but that has no basis in the evidence at hand.

Great news, for me at least. I believe I have resolved this issue on a whim funnily enough. I was sitting there thinking when out of nowhere a Mcafee popup appeared. I don't use Mcafee and I got rid of it a while ago so I found the file locations for Mcafee program and deleted them all just to remove them. Then wouldn't you know it my laptops fine now. Can't explain why it caused so much hassle but i'm going to keep an eye on my laptop incase it happens again.

I always suspect the anti-virus - whether it 'makes sense' or not.

Years ago, when I was still a bit-head, I was introduced to a PC. There was a hardware issue with an optical drive. Much pain later, it was determined to be the anti-virus app - acting like a hardware issue.