Win7 login never presented

[DavidRoessler]

Greetings!
As a new owner of a Thinkpad T500 with Win7 Pro pre-installed, I am delighted to find this board! My problem is that when starting the machine, it goes through what appears to be normal start up, but ~ 60% of the attempts result in the windows splash screen, followed by what appears to be the normal login. However, the available accounts are not presented, nor are any other displayed screen widgets (shutdown, accessibility) can be operated.
As this is a new acquisition, I haven't had the chance to "experiment" with settings, but I thought it might be useful to ask for experience here first. Any suggestions on how to proceed are greatly appreciated!
thanks!

[ganon11000]

if its new and you haven't used it much try re-installing windows from a disk or recovery partition?