I took my HDD out of my laptop, connected it via a SATA->USB connector externally to the same laptop, and tried to boot from it. It didn't work. Apparently, it also corrupted something in the system, and I'd love to understand what exactly happened. The HDD is now back inside the laptop.
At present, my laptop boots to a screen where it requests my password to log in, and I can't get any further from there.
After Windows loads, the internal keyboard and the touchpad don't work at all. If I boot from a Windows Recovery CD, they both work fine, so it's not a hardware issue. (Startup Recovery, from the same CD, doesn't find any problems with my setup.)
If I attach an external keyboard and tap on Num Lock, the LED stops blinking as Windows loads. In the initial boot stages, or if I boot from a CD, the keyboard works OK.
If I attach an external mouse, it keeps working even after Windows loads the login screen. It doesn't help, however: when I try to enable on-screen keyboard from the accessibility dialog, it just doesn't appear. Quite a few of the accessibility options seem to have no effect: e.g. if I select "High Contrast", it works; but if I select "Magnifier", it doesn't.
Booting in Safe Mode doesn't make any difference.
Any suggestions on how I might be able to get back into my system?
Edit: I managed to advance slightly, by creating an executable that runs net user myname "", and replacing \Windows\System32\Utilman.exe with this executable. Now, with a click on my username, I'm able to log in. What happens next is that I see a blank screen with a "Windows 7 Build 7601" in the bottom-right corner; no explorer and no wallpaper. I can move the mouse pointer around the screen, but there isn't anything I could click on.
How do I proceed now?
