XP login problem , please help

Darkst4r · 6 Jul 2009 at 09:40

Hi , I am trying to solve a problem for a friend as he cannot access the internet at the moment.

The problem is as follows : While watching a film online , apparantly a pop-up window caused his PC to crash and freeze , the only thing he could do was to manually switch power to the PC off and reboot. After rebooting he was taken to the "administrator/guest" login screen (he never saw this screen before) he clicks on the administrator screen , is let into the operating system for approximately a second before being taken back to the login screen again.

Has anyone got a fix for this problem , it would be much appreciated.

Cheers.

Sin_Chase · 6 Jul 2009 at 09:47

userinit.exe is probably corrupt/hijacked.

Boot into Windows Recovery Console (Or bootable environment of choice) rename the old file to userinit.bak and then copy of a fresh version of the file.

This file lives in Windows\system32.

Boot then try login.

Can download a copy online or if you want me to host a clean copy, shout.

Darkst4r · 6 Jul 2009 at 10:05

Hi , thanks a lot for the fast reply. Unfortunately he doesnt have a windows XP CD , his computer has a hard drive partition. Can I still boot in recovery console ? If so how do I do this ?
Cheers

Sin_Chase · 6 Jul 2009 at 12:20

You need a CD for recovery console.

Borrow/Download one.

Also you can use BartPE.

Failing that make a Windows 98 Boot Disk, if you have a floppy drive around

Darkst4r · 6 Jul 2009 at 12:45

Thanks again , I ended up taking out the affected drive , set it as a slave in my machine , performed a virus scan and replaced the files from there.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Darkst4r · 6 Jul 2009 at 16:08

Bah , I spoke too soon , it hasnt worked. I hooked it up as a slave drive and replaced the file that way but the problems the same.

Im having trouble setting up the bios to boot from the affected drive too. Could anyone tell me the correct bios settings to boot from that drive please ?

My own HDD isnt IDE but the dodgy one is. The bios detected the dodgy drive so I thought I set it to boot from that one but I got the screen that says something about software or hardware changes detected , boot in "normal mode , safe mode , last good config etc" whichever one I choose forces a reboot and take me back to the same boot options screen.

Arrrgh , I think one has stumped me.

Any help would be very much appreciated.