Will not load login screen

I upgraded my HP m8530f from Vista Premium to 7 Ultimate and have 2 main pain in the butt issues:

When it reboots it will not load the login screen. it loads the windows 7 logo and then sits at a blank screen with the pointer. it'll sit for hours and never load.
I CAN reboot and load the last known good config and I can login, but no matter what I try, every restart results the same.

2nd issue: I cannot get to the internet. I can get to the homegroup, I cannot even login to the router. But I can ping any site, my ISP sees the PC on the net. But no matter the browser I cannot get online. I cannot get it to activate the OS either.

I did learn I have an integrated Realtex POS lan adapter that I blame, realtek says it's driverless hardware. Hp doesn't have W7 support for this PC. my buddy's Pavilion Elite does have driver download support for 7, but of course my mid-range PC does not!

Any thoughts? Suggests? Genius that know the answer??

Do you know the motherboard model or type of Realtek adapter and I'll see if I can find some drivers for it. I'm sure we can get it working somehow

With regards to the login issue, does anything show in Event Viewer when you use "Last known good config"?

I would recommend a clean install if that is an option, as upgrades often seem to carry over a few quirks. That's not to say that it shouldn't work though.

Motherboard:
Motherboard description: Motherboard manufacturer's name: ASUS M2N78-LA
HP/Compaq name: Viola-GL8E

Onboard LAN
1 Realtek PHY RTL8211B-GR 10/100/1000 Mb/s (Gigabit Ethernet)

Can you try the 8200 chipset drivers from this page to see if that gets your network device working : http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html

Select nForce > nForce 7 series > nForce 730a/GeForce 8200 and then choose your Windows 7 OS version. That should do the trick

ok, downloaded those drivers and installed. no difference! I was able to activate w7 now and even did an update driver check, which it said it was checking online and downloaded an updated driver, but I still cannot access the internet regardless of the browser i use. I also cannot access the router's ip address.

don't konw what to do!

What would I be looking for?

ALSO, a clean install really isn't an option. the image I made before i upgraded is corrupted, I tried to revert and it said it cannot read the disks...so something happened there. I don't have a the space to back up the info I need. (pics of kids, music, work docs, personal doc, email, etc) I have about 37 gigs available on an external hd but need 70gigs.

Plus I dont have the restore disks, nice little trick the Comp manufactures pulled to make more money, instead of just giving you a disk for a back up they create a partition...but I cannot access the partition and they want 35 to ship me a disk in 7-10 days! Greed!

Hi bmac979

How much free space do you have on C:?
If you have 100GB free space on C:, you can shrink C: using disk management then create a second partition for you data backup. Once you have a data backup you can proceed with the install.

One other thought too, you said something about a restore partition that you couldn't access. If you mark this recovery partition active, it may boot and restore to factory settings. If you are in question about it removing your files on the second drive you created. Trust me it will not change any partitions and will only write to the partition that had the original operating system.

If you do decide to try and restore your computer to factory settings. Check to see if you have the option to create your own Restore Disk from the Recovery Partition. If you do have this option, you are only allowed to create one set so take care of them.

I contacted HP Support yesterday, after finding out my warranty expired 39 days ago and they wants $59.99 to talk to me, I ended up getting free lvl 2 support online via chat. after going thru a series of checks nothing worked. he said to save what I want OFF the PC's hard drive and do a recovery from the partition. I asked him why I had to do it off the PC's HD, he said that the recovery will wipe clean and reinstall on the same size partition as from the factory...I know you say directly that it won't but to be safe, I am going to by a Tb and back everything up to that.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be back if there are issues with a "clean" install, even though if I do a restore, it will give me the same Vista and I'll be back in the position of an upgrade vs a true clean install. right?