Another thread on this problem has closed. I am adding this in case it
can help someone with the same problem. I have just had 3 days of hell
trying to get my HP dv9500 Notebook working again. (Vista Home Premium
32 bit)

I tried most of the suggestions listed in the other thread although I
could never complete a successful restore to a previous date even though
I tried a dozen times or so from both safe mode and normal windows.

I disabled my PC Tools Spyware Doctor early on. I used Reg Cure to
disable all startup programs. Most attempts to do these things were
aborted when the lock up condition appeared anywhere from 3 to 7 or 8
minutes after power-on - during the procedure. The timing to lock-up
varied each time so I kept trying. I must have hard-stopped my computer
by holding the power switch depressed for 5 seconds or so - at least 50
times and restarted it again trying different ideas.

Finally, during one initial boot, I hit the F11 key which diverted me
to some diagnostic screens before Windows had a chance to start loading
its files. While there I ran a CHKDSK under the virtual DOS service
which took about 2 hours. That process found and corrected numerous
errors on the hard drive.

(I have no idea if one of those errors was causing the windows logon
process to fail or if those disk errors were caused by my many
hard-stops, some combination of or none of the above.)

I tried rebooting normally after that with no expectations that I had
done anything to make things better. However, I've been running without
any problems for about two hours now exercising all my usual programs. I
restarted PC Tools Spyware and ran an Intelliscan which showed no
infections and I have re-enabled Spyware Doctor's Immunization and On
Guard Protection. So far no problem with lock-up or that error message.
I'll keep my fingers crossed and update this thread if the problem
re-appears.

Hope this helps somebody out there as none of the threads I was able to
find offered any clear solutions to this problem. This is a very
insidious and discouraging problem because it effectively prevents you
from using your computer to solve it.

Good luck.


--
Banjoguy