Windows 7 Boot Question

[Huderon]

I picked up[ a refurbished Win7 PC today, and everything was working when I collected it.

When I start it up at home, it boots, gets to the screen which says Windows is starting, and then nothing - screen goes blank, but there does seem to be a fair bit of disk activity. The PC does work - I'm writing this while running in safe mode with networking.

My guess is that some updates are being applied, but they seem to be taking a very long time to install - long time as in hours. Now, I know nothing much about Win7, and can't seem to access whatever is needed to control automatic updates (I can find it via help, but clicking on the link in the help system doesn't do anything).

Is there any way I can get Win7 to actually show me what is going on when the starting Windows screen disappears, or is there a way to get to whatever controls automatic updates so that I can actually make some use of this thing ?

[Huderon]

I think I've figured it out - the PC was booting properly, but the default screen resolution was too high for my monitor to handle. When I rebooted and tried to get to safe mode options with F8, I got a nice long list of options, including using a low screen resolution. That let me at least boot nicely, and I can now use the machine with a screen resolution my monitor will support.