new pc keeps going to startup repair
 

I have a new PC - about 2 months old. It works with no problems when it is on. I turn it off at night and often the next morning it gets to the screen before I enter the Windows password (the Vista screen which has the small timer at the bottom of the screen) and it just continues to show the timer and nothing happens. I then have to push the computer power button and restart the computer. This takes me to a Startup Repair utility which usually fixes the problem but sometimes takes a few attempts. If it doesn't work I can often get it going by doing the F8 - last known good configuration option. Does anyone know why it does this i.e. doesn't always get to the password screen? Is it anything to do with shutting down the night before? - all I do is use the start menu. It is very annoying and the shop (major supermarket) said I could send it back but they may charge! - they would just reload Vista and I'd loose all the data.

Yeah my vista box was doing that. I found that it was behind on the updates. There is SP2 available for Vista now. I would suggest checking that before going to much further. Let me know if that's all good and I'll see if there is anything more I can do to help.

I recently installed SP2 and it didn't make any difference.

OK so it was doing it pre SP2 and is doing it post SP2? Is that correct?

After you boot up have a look at the event viewer and see what the logs are saying. Are there any errors there?

Are there any other devices plugged in during startup, remove anything non essential and try another startup.

It's probably one of the drivers that is corrupting try booting into safe mode and loading the drivers one at a time until it hangs.

Look at:
What are the system recovery options in Windows*Vista? - Windows Vista Help

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista

A description of the Safe Mode Boot options in Windows XP