I'll chip in with some additional information and see if that helps, since nobody posted a detailed flow yet.
While I have the same problem as everyone else, I am running on a homebuilt desktop system with a Radeon HD 6850.
In detail, the problem manifests as that the startup proceeds as normal, including loading login screen graphics to past the point where I enter my password. When the prompt changes to "Welcome", the spinning dots animation commences and nothing else happens
for about a minute, after which a black screen is loaded. At this point, the mouse pointer still works but not the start button or any normal windows hotkey, except Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Bringing up a Task Manager allows me to start and run programs, but neither
starting, shutting down and restarting explorer actually produces any effective result. I can't find any special process running, such as Trouble reporting or similar. IE or desktop programs run fine.
After a few more minutes, maybe three, the desktop or start screen loads as usual, but the start screen is corrupted. Most Modern Apps only display some internal name and no icon, but a few (such as economy and store, for instance) show content in their
livetiles. Attempting to start one of the internal name ones, such as mail, yields an error, while starting one with a working livetile opens a blank screen with no possibility to interact. The start screen/Modern UI app problem is persistent.
All desktop applications run as normal.
A few observations and failed troubleshooting attempts:
All available updates were downloaded.
The graphics drivers that were installed with the 8.1 update were 8.13, in other words ancient. Updating to 13.9 or the latest beta 13.11 (both supposedly working with 8.1, and worked fine in the consumer preview) did not help.
Uninstalling the last month of programs did nothing.
The store icon said "Win 8.1 Consumer Preview", but at the actual app page the proper Win 8.1 Pro was displayed.
No other driver conflicts, and no reported logs (Can I log what is happening post-login somehow?).
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Proposed as answer by
Kisan Adhikari
Tuesday, November 19, 2013 1:54 PM