Goes back to welcome screen after sign on..

[nagolf]

Hi all.

I booted up my computer tonight, got to the welcome screen, got to the desktop screen, but it wouldn't load and it played the logoff sound and went back to the welcome screen.
Any ideas what may be causing this? Any and all help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Windows 2000XP home edition.

[pam123]

Windows 2000XP home edition.

Which one?

If it's XP then try booting in safe mode and using system restore.
If that doesn't do it, or you have 2k, do you have the OS cd ?

[glc]

Did you recently remove some spyware? This is a symptom of a particular type of spyware where incomplete removal screws the system up like this. The only way to correct this is use of the emergency repair console available by booting with the Windows CD.

http://www.winxptutor.com/wsaremove.htm

Enter the Recovery Console

Boot the system using the Windows XP CD-ROM. In the first screen when the Setup begins, read the instructions press "R" (in the first screen) enter the Recovery Console. Type-in the built-in Administrator password to enter the Console. You'll see the prompt reading C:\Windows (Or any other drive-letter where you've installed XP)

Type the following command and press Enter.

CD SYSTEM32
(If that does not work, try CHDIR SYSTEM32)

COPY USERINIT.EXE WSAUPDATER.EXE

Quit Recovery Console by typing EXIT and restart Windows.

You'll be able to login successfully as you've created the wsaupdater.exe file (now, a copy of userinit.exe)

Now, change the USERINIT value in the registry (see Phase II in this page) and change it accordingly.

Phase II - Fixing a registry entry which causes the Quick Launch issue (not retaining the settings)

Click Start, Run and type REGEDIT. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ WindowsNT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon

In the right-pane, change the value of Userinit to "C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,"

Type the above value exactly as given, including the comma - exclude the quotes. Also, change the path to userinit.exe appropriately if Windows is installed in a different drive.

Close Registry Editor and restart Windows. The Quick Launch settings should be retained now.

[Ghost(BOO!)]

A good thing to do is always double check what your spyware program is saying is safe to delete (if you did do a spyware check that glc was talking about). If you don't know what it is then search around to find out.