How come I cannot see the Windows login screen?

Q: I recently built my own PC – Gigabyte p55 motherboard, Nvidia Geforce GTX 480 graphics card, Intel i7-870 CPU, 4gb DDR3 ram, and a 1Tb hard drive split into 2 partitions which I reused from my old PC.

After formatting one partition of my hard drive, I installed windows 7 on it. The other partition has all my data and windows 7 still on it, but I removed it from the boot list so it only boots from the new partition.

All was well and good until I boot up, sign in, and install the new drivers for my graphics card. Now, every time I boot in normal mode, the password screen comes up black. The only reason I know it’s there is because of the welcome chime. If I type my password in it goes to the desktop, but only the wallpaper displays, no start bar, no icons, nothing.

I can only access it properly in safe mode, and I’ve tried installing older drivers to no avail. My hardware is all compatible, so it shouldn’t be a hardware issue. Does anyone have any idea what might be happening, or better yet, how to solve it?