Re: Windows XP home login/off

From: rccomputer (rccomputer.1buz05_at_mail.mcse.ms)
Date: 08/31/04


Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:38:14 -0500


guru777 wrote:
> *SOLUTION: checkout my website:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/6o8zc *

THis is what I did to get the problem fixed. I got these instructions
off of Expert Exchange.

Accepted Answer from CrazyOne
Date: 04/29/2004 12:29PM PDT
Grade: B
Accepted Answer

Hmm perhaps

How Do I Do a "Repair Installation"?
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_install.htm

Repair
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://tinyurl.com/2zgk

Visual aid to the above procedure
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
Click on How To Run a Repair Install

You May Lose Data or Program Settings After Reinstalling, Repairing, or
Upgrading Windows XP
http://tinyurl.com/d2w8

Data Loss May Occur After Reinstalling, Repairing, or Upgrading Windows
XP
http://tinyurl.com/7yv3q

Comment from sunray_2003
Date: 04/29/2004 12:29PM PDT
Comment

Hi Mordanthanus,

Have you tried last known good configuration ? May be something is
screwed. Try that and post back if it would function well. Did youdo
any changes in your system recently ?

Check for virus and spyware in the system

Post back

Thanks

Comment from SheharyaarSaahil
Date: 04/29/2004 12:29PM PDT
Comment

Hello Mordanthanus =)

Did u activate the XP ??

!! GOOD LUCK !!

Comment from sunray_2003
Date: 04/29/2004 01:11PM PDT
Comment

check this too: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313322

Comment from asrobinson
Date: 05/11/2004 05:51AM PDT
Comment

I am seeing the same problem on an XP system right after cleaning a
virus. Click on profile to log in. Wall paper flashes briefly then logs
me right back off. Anyone else seen this, any suggestions?

Comment from highway-computers
Date: 05/17/2004 11:04PM PDT
Comment

I have a customers Compaq laptop with the same problem, only I can
login under administrator in safe mode but that account only. I have
scanned for viruses in another computer, but found nothing.

This really has me stumped. Please help! I cannot install service pack
1 either and my customer requires all his data in one piece. I want to
avoid a repair install if possible.

HELP:!!!

Comment from pizza_man
Date: 05/22/2004 09:02PM PDT
Comment

I am having exactly the same problem. I try to log in with either my
username or administrator and just logs out immediately. The same
behaviour happens when I try it on safe mode. I've tried reinstalling
windows (repair installation) several times but the same behaviour
persists after. Any ideas?

Comment from quintoncomputers
Date: 05/24/2004 03:45PM PDT
Comment

I have just fixed this issue for a client with the same simptoms by
doing the following: using ESD commander, I was able to edit the
registry and change the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit key from a garbled value his
broadband provider's software set, to C:\WINDOWS\system32\Explorer.exe,
for WinXPPro, home may have a different location for Explorer.exe, but
this is almost always the problem with that behaviour. Re-installing
windows is almost never necessary in this situation, changing the
registry has worked the 5 or 6 times I have seen this problem.

If you have access to another computer to burn a disk, there are
several options to modify the registry, such as
http://sourceforge.net/projects/austrumi .. google is your friend
here.

Good luck! This situation IS recoverable with a little work, without
data loss.

Andrew Quinton

Comment from pizza_man
Date: 05/25/2004 08:10PM PDT
Comment

I just checked that registry key in two computers, one with the log
on-log off behavior and one that works okay and in both that key has
this value : "C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe," and not explorer.exe.
There is no explorer.exe in the system32 directory.

Comment from pizza_man
Date: 05/25/2004 09:13PM PDT
Comment

I tried quintoncomputers solution and it worked for me. :D

Comment from pizza_man
Date: 05/25/2004 09:14PM PDT
Comment

Although I did a slight modification in his solution, to the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit i added "C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.exe,"
and not "C:\WINDOWS\system32\Explorer.exe,". Yes, including the comma.

Comment from eksperten
Date: 06/02/2004 04:03AM PDT
Comment

Where do you find ESD Commander and how to use it??

Comment from pizza_man
Date: 06/02/2004 01:56PM PDT
Comment

Actually what he was referring to is ERD Commander from Winternals.
http://tinyurl.com/2fkdq . But any other product which you could use to
edit the registry from an unbootable system will work.

Comment from quintoncomputers
Date: 06/02/2004 07:24PM PDT
Comment

Yes, I had an unfortunate typo there, ERD is spendy, but worth it, I am
working on instructions on how to fix this with Open Source Software,
but modifying the Windows registry from Linux can be a dangerous
proposition, i should have complete instructions in a day or so (my
wife is having a baby any day, so my computer interest is taking a back
seat.)

Comment from quintoncomputers
Date: 06/02/2004 07:28PM PDT
Comment

Sorry, Here is a link to get you started
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html i have used it
with basic admin pasword changes (via the CD-ROM ISO) but haven't
delved into the registry to any degree yet. Good luck, I'll update when
I can.

Comment from DSoz
Date: 06/03/2004 01:58PM PDT
Comment

The free tool quintoncomputers mentioned worked well enough to show me
the bad registry entry (wsaupdater.exe) that AdAware had removed. Then
I went into Recovery Console to copy userinit.exe to wsaupdater.exe.
Once back to the full version of Windows, I could fix the registry &
remove the bad file again.

Comment from carbonmonoxyd
Date: 06/04/2004 02:39AM PDT
Comment

I am also having the same problem with Windows XP Home Edition.

I was wondering what free tool it is that you were able to use, DSoz?

Comment from DSoz
Date: 06/04/2004 04:42AM PDT
Comment

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

I used the ISO to make the boot disk. That only allowed me to see the
registry key that was bad, not fix it. However, as I mentioned, it was
enough to let me know what to do to work around the bad key enough to
get into Windows & fix it right.

Comment from dercoss
Date: 06/08/2004 07:46AM PDT
Comment

I've checked a working xp pro sp1 machine and its path is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit
with a value of "C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,"

not "C:\WINDOWS\system32\explorer.exe. I changed an affected pc to the
suggested setting but there was no difference the pc would still not
boot.

Anybody else had this problem and managed to fix it when this fix
hasn't worked??

dc

Comment from kaseylongwood
Date: 06/08/2004 10:48AM PDT
Comment

dsoz...
i was wondering how you had the program search to see which registry
value was bad. thanks

gvb

Comment from quintoncomputers
Date: 06/08/2004 12:31PM PDT
Comment

The value of 'userinit.exe' runs a program that does start-up tasks,
THEN is SUPPOSED to execute c:\windows\explorer.exe, - viruses, worms,
and plain poor programming can cause userinit.exe to not call
explorer.exe , which is the actual windows user interface - that's why
you see the desktop flash, then logout - there isn't anything specified
to run as a user interface - My mistake on an earlier post was to
specify 'c:\WINDOWS\system32\explorer.exe' - explorer.exe actually
resides in c:\WINDOWS on XP - change the registry entry to
'C:\windows\explorer.exe,' and try that out. You may have other
problems, but if you see the desktop flash then logout, this should at
least get you in to where you can run antivirus and ad/malware
detection software.

Hope this helps,

Andrew

Comment from bmerritt79
Date: 06/08/2004 12:59PM PDT
Comment

I, too, ran into this problem last night; and thanks to the web and
people like you, I was able to fix it.

My problem occurred as I was installing R-DriveImage demo software (on
an unrelated hard disk crash)... LavaSoft's Ad-Aware popped up and
wanted to run, I let it. Then I got a message that I needed to reboot
(I wrongly thought it had to do with the R-DriveImage software.), I let
it reboot... when it did, it logged on briefly to a blank desktop, then
logged off to the Welcome screen with only an Administrator icon
available. Every time I would click on the Admin icon, the computer
would log on and log off within a second or two. I remembered that the
R-DriveImage software had said something about needing Admin privileges
(I am the only user on my machine so I had never set up either another
user or input an Admin password.) so I thought maybe the password file
had been corrupted... that eventually led me to PNordahl's
http://home.ernet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

I tried several times to change/reset to blank my Administrator
password... no joy... finally realized, duh, that the password was
fine... when I clicked on the Administrator icon at the welcome screen,
it didn't say I couldn't log on, it logged on and immediately off!

That led me to this thread. I decided to use the austrumi ISO disk
image mentioned by quintoncomputers and
http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm#1 to burn a
bootable CD Rom. (When it boots, don't take too long to type in
nt_pass at the boot: prompt or it will continue to boot to a Latvian
version of the Linux GUI, which does not appear to have a GUI version
of a windows registry editor.)

"nt_pass" apparently runs a linux script that eventually runs chntpw
(change nt passord?) that appears to be a version of the same program
created by pnordahl.

The script will stop and ask you to hit enter to continue to load SCSI
drivers, it then asked me if I wanted it to probe for SCSI drivers:
[n], I took the default [n]o and hit enter. Next, it asked what
partition contains your NT installation, I took the default again, in
this case [/dev/hda2] and hit enter. Then it asked: what is the full
path to the registry directory, again select the default
[windows\system32\config]. Next came the question, which hives (files)
do you want to edit (leave default for password setting, separate
multiple names with spaces), the default was [sam system security], I
chose to type software and hit enter.

I then chose option 9 - registry editor.

A ? will get you a list of commands that are available, I used ls which
appears to be equivalent to a DOS dir command... cd to change
directories... cat to print the value of a key... and ed to change the
value of a key.

For instance (this is from memory, not notes... sorry) at the prompt
[1020], type cd Microsoft and hit enter, then cd Windows NT and hit
enter, then cd CurrentVersion and hit enter, finally cd Winlogon and
hit enter (case is important).

Maybe you could just type one cd Microsoft/Windows
NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon and hit enter... I don't know. But it seems
to be the registry equivalent of
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

At that point I typed cat Userinit and lo and behold, up came
C:\WINDOWS\System32\wsaupdater.exe... I don't know what company
replaced userinit.exe with this entry, but I don't think I like them.
At any rate I typed ed Userinit and at the prompt
[C:\Windows\System32\wsaupdater.exe] I typed
C:\Windows\System32\userinit.exe and hit enter.

Then q to quit (you will be asked if there is something to save), q to
keep quitting and y when it asks if you're sure you want to write the
changes (careful, careful... good luck). The program then dumped me
out to a # prompt and said I could rerun the script if I typed a space
followed by sh /script/main.rc

I removed the cdrom from the drive and rebooted to Windows XP, no
problems.

Good luck all and thanks for the help... did I mention I hate
computers?

Comment from kaseylongwood
Date: 06/09/2004 06:11AM PDT
Comment

thanks everybody who helped out, especially bmerritt. its all fixed and
i had the same thing wsaupdater.exe. i have never had a problem with
adaware but it might be a different program that caused it. i had just
used spysweeper for the first time and most likely that is what caused
it. oh well its fixed now. and thanks again to everyone.

Comment from mer_ner
Date: 06/09/2004 09:16AM PDT
Comment

Hi, I was having this problem and I still am. I can't even get in on
Safe Mode. I have installed Windows for a second time and I wish to be
able to use all my old setting. I don't know how to look at the
registry for the 1st Windows that was installed so I can change the
key. Can you help?

Comment from carbonmonoxyd
Date: 06/09/2004 09:19PM PDT
Comment

I had the same problem which stemmed from using Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and
I found a very simple fix;

First off, boot your computer from your Windows XP restore cd/OS cd,
when the menu comes up hit the R key to get to the recovery prompt.

The prompt should start off at C:\Windows. Type 'cd system32'. The
prompt should now read 'C:\Windows\system32'

Type copy userinit.exe wsaupdater.exe

Viola.

That did it for me. I'm not sure this will work for all cases, as mine
stemmed from Ad-Aware deleting/replacing files. Hope this helps.

Matt Featherstone

Comment from avi_india
Date: 06/10/2004 07:13AM PDT
Comment

Hi All,

I am facing same issue :

This morning, I was working on my laptop at my home. then while coming
to work, I just closed the lid and brought notebook to my workplace.
(something which i do daily). When I opened the lid, it will not resume
(from standby position). At that time I cold rebooted the machine. I
get to login screen, but as soon as I log in, I am logged out back to
login screen. Happenes with all the users on the system.

What should I do in such a case? I can not use any of the tools
described above as I simply can not login. Can this be a virus? If yew,
how do i clean. I have antivitus but I never created a rescue disk..
:((

-Ajay

Comment from ndknightmare
Date: 06/16/2004 01:36AM PDT
Comment

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem after doing a repair on windows XP - i
was going to copy the userinit.exe to wsaupdater.exe, but it wasnt
there.

I started the recovery console and then did expanded it from the
windows xp cd

d:
cd i386
expand userinit.ex_ c:\windows\system32

i was then able to get in to windows.

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions above.

ndk

Comment from lewisrw
Date: 06/20/2004 06:41PM PDT
Comment

Hi - just had the same problem with my son's laptop and Win XP;
although since he doesn't have Lavasoft Ad-Aware installed, I can't
blame it on Ad-Aware. Thank you for all of the ideas in this thread. I
fixed the problem by 1) booting to a Repair Console (IBM provides this
on their laptops), 2) changing to C:\WINDOWS\System32, and 3) copying
userinit.exe to wsaupdater.exe (there was no wsaupdater.exe present). I
then 4) reboot into Safe mode and successfully logged-on as
Adminstrator (for the first time in several days!) Next step was to 5)
edit the registry and change userinit in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon from "wsaupdater.exe," to "userinit.exe,";
6) final reboot and back to normal! Thanks everyone. --Rick Lewis--

Comment from janedoe
Date: 07/11/2004 01:00AM PDT
Comment

Hey, I changed the registry key
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon) to 'explorer.exe,' from 'userinit.exe'
which didn't fix the problem. I am unsure of what to do next. I'm
running Windows Xp Home

Comment from Packet1009
Date: 07/12/2004 10:28AM PDT
Comment

tried this today on a client box - wsaupdater.exe was missing but
referenced in the registry. copying userinit.exe over to it worked just
fine. thanks

Comment from supergjsy
Date: 07/25/2004 05:02AM PDT
Comment

I Love clever people (compared to me thats most of you guys) I had this
thing on friends pc
tried many things no joy :( Friend had already had a play :(

Any way long story short bmerritt thankyou for the noddys guide you are
now adistinction
and pnordhal who has saved me many hours in the past with pass word
changer should now be elevated to god status

thanks agian bmerritt/pnordahl you guys are way to clever for me

Comment from Syncubus
Date: 08/25/2004 09:40AM PDT
Comment

Just wanted to post a quick "thank you" to the solution providers for
this topic. It was helpful to me, as well.

Comment from yogi_bear_rulez
Date: 08/25/2004 03:37PM PDT
Comment

Yo,
I had almost the same problem, but I was so foolish to delete the
entire Userinit Value !
Here is my solution for that ! :) Took a while to figure it out.

Boot with the Windows XP install CD-rom and go to the Recovery Console
(pressing R)
Log on to the correct WINDOWS partition, normally the 1.
Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\config
Give the command dir and you will see the hive called software.
Copy this "corrupted" hive to e.g. C:\software.bak using the following
command:
copy C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software C:\software.bak
This is to have your Software Hive / Registry handy to edit it later
with the REG tool.

Now to get your system bootable again.....

Copy the REPAIR version of this SOFTWARE hive (kind of registry) to the
operational location.
Do this with the following command:

copy C:\WINDOWS\Repair\software C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software

Now a running SOFTWARE hive is copied to the operational location.
exit the Recovery Console using the exit command.

Reboot the system and see if the system starts.

If the system starts. you need to get the backed up software hive up
and running

Open a DOS prompt
Use the command REG
REG LOAD HKLM\WRONG C:\software.bak

It should say import successfuly.

Now open regedt32 and Go to HKEYLOCALMACHINE and then WRONG
You will see that the entire SOFTWARE tree is located there....:)
Add the key as mentioned above Userinit type REG_SZ with the value as
mentioned above
C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,
Don't forget the comma !

Now exit regedt32

Now save this WRONG subkey as a file again.
Open a DOS box again and use the REG command again to save the subkey.
REG SAVE HKLM\WRONG C:\sofware.new

Open the regdt32 again and delete the key WRONG, because it is not
doing anything usefull.

Reboot the system with the Windows XP install CD
Go to the recovery console (R)

Now copy the new software hiv to the operational location:

copy C:\software.new C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software

It will ask for overwrite,...choose Y ofcourse.

Your done ,... reboot the system and it should work.

--
rccomputer
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