XP Pro Freezes at "Loading Personal Settings"

[AndyM]

This is a PIII 700 system that belongs to a friend. I gave it to her a few months ago with a clean install.
XP boots to the blue personal settings screen, then either freezes or gives an assortment of error messages from there. Over the last couple of days it has make it past the errors twice and booted to her desktop. When it makes it, all programs seem to run fine and the cdrom is recognized. I have produced the problem with each of the RAM sticks installed separately.
I thought the thing to do was a fresh install, but the CDROM is not recognized, and I get a Boot Failure Message.
Does anyone have a suggestion to troubleshoot these symptoms?
Thanks.

[TwoRails]

Could be anything from a shakey power supply to driver problems. Did she add any new hard/software lately? Any USB devices? can you boot to Safe Mode and disable any startup items?

[Designer]

Also you said error messages come up, can you please post them as it could help to narrow down the problems.

[AndyM]

Hmmm. There are no USB devices attached. I tried a boot to safe mode but again it asks for a user selection and password for the administrator, which I don't know. When I select her user name it still freezes....

[Designer]

Originally posted by AndyM Hmmm. There are no USB devices attached. I tried a boot to safe mode but again it asks for a user selection and password for the administrator, which I don't know. When I select her user name it still freezes....

If the adminstrator account has'nt been altered the default username is "Administrator" and there is no password set by default so try just hitting enter

[AndyM]

OK...I'm back home only to find that after it has been left unattended for the last 3 hours, it somehow finally booted to safemode during that time. I ran msconfig and disabled all but 3 items from the startup menu. I restarted and it went right back to the stall when I cick the username on the welcome screen. It flashes the "Loading your personal settings..." message and basically starts going real slow from there. Any other suggestions?

[TwoRails]

Have you run any antivirus / spyware checkers?

[AndyM]

I know she has some kind of spyware program installed but I can't get to the start menu to try it. Isn't it odd that it won't boot off the cdrom? Does that imply a hardware problem?

[TwoRails]

I assume you already checked in the BIOS that it's set to boot from CD?

[AndyM]

Yes, it's weird. I even set all 3 devices as Cdrom to see if that would catch it but I only got the "Boot Disk Failure" message.
It's like the BIOS doesn't pick it up.

[Designer]

Check in the BIOS that the CD drive has been detected and it's enabled.

[tacoeater]

and have you tried a different cd rom drive?

[Designer]

Also check the cable is OK, try swapping it for another