My machine has soiled it pantaloons

Ok, this is ridiculous. My Windows 7 machine has completely crapped itself and it seems hundreds of people have run into this problem. It boots just fine, but when it gets to the login screen, it goes black and there is no way to log in. You can see the cursor and move it around, but there is no way to get to a desktop. There is no way to get past it or get into the machine from Safe Mode.

I’m not entirely sure how to fix this. Like I said, dozens of people have written about this and the solutions range from reformatting, to swapping out DLL’s, to disconnecting USB drives, to virus problems. Great, this should be fun to fix.