Grey screen with working mouse after login

OK so I have reinstalled 3 times now with the same result eachtime. Everything works fine up to the Gui login screen. I log in as root and then it seems to login fine. The desktop is just grey with my mouse cursor. I can move the mouse around but there are no icons, menus, or anything else. No hot keys work just a cursor and a grey screen. I have been searching the Internet for 3 hours and I can't find a solution so I'm hoping someone can help me.

Some details:
Installing most recent version of kali (7/6/16) via cd drive. Installed to the hard drive as the sole OS.
The laptop is older it's a HP pavilion dv2000 with stock hardware. I have an Alfa USB NIC plugged in which is working fine as well. Please let me know any other information I can try to get for you. I can't look at anything from inside the GUI but I think I can boot in to a recovery mode and access the command line.

I'm experiencing a similar issue. Everything works fine until I login via GUI as root. Then I just get a grey-ish screen with a cursor. However, if I press ctrl+alt+f1, this will indeed take me to the terminal.

According to this thread (http://serverfault.com/questions/708...ot-boot-in-gui) from terminal I've executed the command apt-get install chkconfig, then chkconfig --level 2 gdm3, and finally gdm3. But this apparently hangs the terminal and my system forever. Notably, I haven't tried the upper portion of the solution, yet I am doing that right now.

Ditto. Tried every solution to include adding "!Windows 2012" to a line in Grub and updating grub. No luck with any. I'm sure the problem has to do with my Radeon graphics card but can't figure it out yet. I'm going to try to download and install the latest radeon drivers for debian from cmd line. If I figure it out, i'll post results here. If you don't hear back, I drank myself to death out of frustration!

@frequency: Try hitting "ESC" after you logon or wait some minutes, this bug is related to "Gnome" with some graphic cards, not Kali itself.
I understand you have installed Kali Rolling from the last ISO available at kali.org but your system is not up to date, they had many updates (& fixs) since they built it, so update your system before tweaking anything:
# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade -y

@gatekeeper: You followed the wrong solution mate...
1°) Chkconfig is a tool designed for SysVinit, not Systemd, so you should use only with "Kali Linux", not "Kali Sana" or "Kali Rolling" because it's deprecated.

2°) Never configure gdm3 to be run at runlevel 2, it should be run at 5 (graphical mode), you can use this command for showing all dependencies for this mode:
# systemctl list-dependencies graphical.target (press "q" to exit)

3°) If you want to fix your mistake:
# chkconfig gdm3 off (for removing the symlink you created)
# apt-get purge chkconfig -y
# systemctl enable gdm3.service
# reboot

Same advice, update your system, this will probably fix your problem

@edlovesiraq: Good luck !

Sorry to be a liar boys. I tried
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...-kali-2-0-sana
and now on boot my computer makes it through 4 lines and starts blinking and just hangs and blinks. I've turned an expensive laptop into a novel low powered strobe light...
Last error before the blinking starts in the four lines is
sp5100_tco: I/O address oX0cd6 already in use
then blinking text and nothing else
sigh... re-installing kali 2.0 and starting from scratch. Please let me know if anyone else solves this.

No problem edlovesiraq, your problem seems to be a sharing address issue with an other device / driver of your system, you'll probably need to patch "sp5100_tco source code" for changing this and recompiling it after.

1°) You can try to blacklist this one in your boot kernel parameters. Press "e" when GRUB2 menu appears and append "modprobe.blacklist=sp5100_tco" after "initrd=install/initrd.gz", next, press "x" to startup.

2°) If you can boot, create a new file named "sp5100_tco-blacklist.conf" into /etc/modprobe.d/:
# echo "blacklist sp5100_tco" > /etc/modprobe.d/sp5100_tco-blacklist.conf
# update-initramfs -u
# reboot

But keep in mind, it's a workaround and you could have some issues until your kernel isn't correctly patched with your hardware configuration.

Solved!
iojymbo- you gave me the solution a while ago and I just messed up the implementation.
Problem: https://www.debian.org/releases/stab...ml#gnome-fglrx Basically with older Radeon cards there is a known issue. Why it works from a thumb drive but not installed is beyond me.
Solution: get rid of gnome. I did this earlier as suggested but I didn't pay close enough attention after using g0tmi1lk's excellent script. You have to choose lightdm as the new display manager. Also DO NOT PURGE GNOME! I don't know why but that kills everything.
1. Install kali to hard drive
2. ctr f3 out of log in on your first boot up, and
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade -y
*note: you must be at least kali rolling 4.3 for this next step to work, or you will get dependancy errors that have to be fixed with dpkg, and force install missing.
3. use
curl -s http://pastebin.com/raw/58wsGhBD | tr -d '\15\32' | bash
from g0tmi1lk to install xfce. Make sure to choose ligthDM when given the option.
My desk top now works!!!
I'm going to now attempt to get my graphics cards working with hashcat.... wish me luck! Thanks for the help guys!