I've had a problem for many months now, but it only happens intermittently so I haven't posted it until now. I'm using Windows 7 Professional, 32-bit edition. I don't use a screen saver, but have the option "On resume, display logon screen" checked and set the wait time to 15 minutes. Sometimes after I've been away from my laptop, when I come back to it and want to login, there is no user icon for me to click and no Password box for me to enter my password into. All I see is the standard Windows 7 background (and the "Ease of Access" icon in the bottom-left corner, which is unresponsive), but there is nothing else on the screen.....no box to type my password, and no icon for my user account that I can normally click, which then displays the Password box. This is quite annoying as I then have to hibernate my laptop and then revive it just to see the icon for my user account again, so that I can unlock my PC. Going to sleep mode and returning doesn't seem to fix the problem; only hibernating (or rebooting completely) work. Has anyone else seen this strange problem and know how to fix it?

Hi, When windows locks, you should press Ctrl+Alt+Del to pup-up the user and password request. If press Ctrl+Alt+Del didn’t work, please login with Clean Boot and try again to check if any services or programs conflict this function. If the issue persists, you can try to create another user account and login to see if the same issue occurs. Hope that helps. Regards, Leo HuangPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I appreciate your advice, but the Clean Boot option would take forever for me to use to troubleshoot this issue, since it only happens maybe once every week or two. No, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work. I could try using another user account, but I think that would be more trouble than it's worth, again because this problem is not consistently reproducible.

Hi, Since this issue occurs one or two time once a week, I suspect the issue related with some third party programs conflict. Because some incompatible programs will cause unexpected issue. Regards, Leo Huang Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I've had a similar problem with my laptops. I found out the issue was the third party encryption software installed to encypte data on my hard drive. Instead of the latpop going to sleep mode, it would show the Windows 7 background with no log on prompt. Alt-Ctrl-Del wouldnt' work, i would have to power the laptop off completely to be able to log back on.

NetworkSupportTech -- that sounds just like what I'm seeing. And there is some software on my laptop to encrypt the hard drive (came out of the box with this Thinkpad). Did you ever figure out a way to avoid it?