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.