XP Logging on then immediately logging off

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I have an HP Pavillion desktop w/ XP (don't know if it's Home or Pro) that
logs off as soon as it logs on. I get welcome screen, logon screen, desktop
wallpaper, then logoff. This happens with the only account on the machine,
the same account in safe mode and the admin account in safe mode. My
research points to a corrupt userinit.exe file in Windows\system32. I
removed the HDD to another computer and replaced the userinit.exe file with
a known good one, then returned the drive to its host machine, but no
change. Further research suggests that a registry key may still point to a
wrong userinit.exe file or wrong path, and I would like to check the
registry to see if this is true. The key is supposed to be:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

The value is supposed to be (on a machine with Windows installed to C):
C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,

This computer is not on my network, so I can't connect to it's registry via
the network. I've booted into recovery console and it asks me to choose
between these two installs:
1. H:\MiniNT
2. H:\I386
I am confused by this because I think there is usually a C:\Windows option
here, or in this case, an H:\Windows. Looking at this drive's folder
structure on another computer, it has a G:\ drive and an H:\ drive. The H
drive has a Windows folder with an I386 folder inside that. The G drive I
believe is the recovery partition and has the MiniNT folder and an I386
folder at it's root. No Windows folder.
I don't know which installation to select and I don't know what commands to
enter to open or check the registry values to see if the key is correct. The
HP recovery utility says that I will have to reinstall all apps that didn't
come with the machine if I use it and I'd like to avoid that. Can anyone
help?
Many thanks,

Rip




.

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