When I start the minecraft launcher it appears as though I've logged in, but the play and log out buttons are grayed out. The place where it would say welcome (username) ready to play minecraft 1.7.9 says guest for username. The profiles are also say they are loading but never come up. Is there a way to fix this? I have uninstalled and reinstalled minecraft and java. My computer is running on Windows 8 if that helps.
Click 'New profile' in the bottom-left, give it a name and click 'Save profile'. From the drop-down box in the bottom-left, select the newly created profile and a login screen should appear.
This is a known bug with the launcher: https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCL-2494
This is a known bug with the launcher: https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCL-2494
Stu