I write this as I'm downloading the 102 updates for this computer to be up to date.

It started out small, and just cataclysmed to a big ball of problems. I woke up this morning and the volume meter didn't want to pop up when I clicked it in the task bar. I fixed that problem by starting and stopping and starting random processes with 'audio' in the description. Got lucky by getting it the second time. SndVol, I think it was. Something like that. Simple enough to start the day.

Fast forward time to some time later. I was watching videos and whatnot and my computer stalled. No keyboard input worked. No ctrl alt del, no ctrl shift esc, nothing worked. So, I pushed my hoof on the power button, a slight inconvenience, but nothing to worry about.

Computer turned on, I logged on, started getting everything back to the way I liked it. After a minute or so, everything started to stall, one by one. So, again, no keyboard combinations worked.

So, like a moss, I tried turning it off and on again. I got to the login screen, logged in, Windows welcomed me, and then, nothing. No desktop, just a mouse and a black screen. Whoooooooooooooo.

Safe mode worked just fine. The next part was a blur of troubleshooting. Turning off all startup programs, virus scans, malware scans, emptying of the temp folder, memory tests, driver upgrades, restoration. Everything I did resulted in that black screen. I tried a boot disk I had to repair windows. That's when things got odd. It said my x64 windows 7 professional disk didn't want to work to repair my x64 windows 7 professional os. It also said that my C partition was D my D was C my L was E and there's this new 'boot' partition for X.

At this point, the only thing I could think of would be to create a new user and see if that would work, out of desperation. I didn't get a black screen that time, I got a blue screen. At that point I decided to reinstall windows. Which brings me to the moral of the story. If you're going to reinstall windows, make sure you have the ethernet interface drivers for your motherboard. That's the most important one and is a pain to get when your only computer doesn't have the ethernet interface driver.

tl;dr make frequent backups