Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
2 Intern
•
491 Posts
0
5726
July 12th, 2008 08:00
Cannot log in after Service Pack 3
A friend of mine has a Dell Dimension 4400 running Windows XP Home. He installed Service Pack 3 a week ago. All was well until the first reboot. Now, a welcome screen appears after Windows boots. His name, which happens to be Brad, appears next to a snowflake icon. There's a notice in the lower right that says, "After you log on, you can add or change accounts. Just go to Control Panel and Click User Accounts."
When you click on the snowflake next to "Brad," it says, "Loading your personal settings." Within two seconds, it says, "Logging off" and then "Saving your personal settings." You can do this over and over and get nowhere.
I tried booting into Safe Mode and using "Last known good configuration." I get the same screen.
After booting directly into Safe Mode, I am presented with a screen that has the "Brad" icon plus "Administrator." If I click on either one of those, I get "Loading your personal settings." Within two seconds, it says, "Saving your personal settings."
Whenever I am presented with the "Brad" snowflake or Administrator chess pieces on bootup, I can hit Alt+Ctrl+Del twice and bring up a box with the user name "Brad" and a blank password field. If I put in no password, I go back to the "Brad" screen and get the "Loading your personal settings, Logging off, Saving your settings" routine again.
If I try a password, I get a message that it was incorrect.
He has never needed a password before, can't remember ever entering a password, and I helped him set up the system several years back. I remember no password.
This computer has an Intel Pentium 4, so the AMD constant-reboot routine with SP3 should not apply.
I have this computer over the weekend and hope to fix it, but I'm stumped. I installed SP3 several weeks ago on my Toshiba Satellite XP laptop without incident.
Does anyone have any idea what's wrong?
When you click on the snowflake next to "Brad," it says, "Loading your personal settings." Within two seconds, it says, "Logging off" and then "Saving your personal settings." You can do this over and over and get nowhere.
I tried booting into Safe Mode and using "Last known good configuration." I get the same screen.
After booting directly into Safe Mode, I am presented with a screen that has the "Brad" icon plus "Administrator." If I click on either one of those, I get "Loading your personal settings." Within two seconds, it says, "Saving your personal settings."
Whenever I am presented with the "Brad" snowflake or Administrator chess pieces on bootup, I can hit Alt+Ctrl+Del twice and bring up a box with the user name "Brad" and a blank password field. If I put in no password, I go back to the "Brad" screen and get the "Loading your personal settings, Logging off, Saving your settings" routine again.
If I try a password, I get a message that it was incorrect.
He has never needed a password before, can't remember ever entering a password, and I helped him set up the system several years back. I remember no password.
This computer has an Intel Pentium 4, so the AMD constant-reboot routine with SP3 should not apply.
I have this computer over the weekend and hope to fix it, but I'm stumped. I installed SP3 several weeks ago on my Toshiba Satellite XP laptop without incident.
Does anyone have any idea what's wrong?
No Events found!
Buckby Man
16 Posts
0
July 12th, 2008 12:00
Recently I had the very same problem and ended up re installing my windows XP with format (NTFS). Fortunately I have a strict backup regime so did not lose anything.
I can only suggest that if you cannot resolve it then a like option is the only way out of it. Like you I have had probles with SP3 so have restored my computer to SP2 and disabled the automatic updates. It now works fine.
Dell Optiplex 170L
256 mb ram
40 GB hard disk
Microsoft office 2003
nilo
2 Intern
•
491 Posts
0
July 13th, 2008 08:00
I used Knoppix-STD to reset the password. The Adminstrator password was already shown as blank. I changed the "Brad" password to blank. No change when trying to boot. Ran Steve Gibson's Spinrite. One bad sector that could not be recovered.
The standard (not STD) Knoppix Linux came in handy, though. I copied My Documents onto an external hard drive and burned the Outlook Express mailboxes to a CD. Now, if I can just recall how to recover that e-mail.
In April 2005, I installed Ghost 9 and a big secondary hard drive for this friend. Made a backup that night. It's the only backup in the drive. Aaaarrrrrrgh! So, it's back to 2005. Downloading all the Windows Updates should be loads of fun.
Buckby Man
16 Posts
0
July 13th, 2008 17:00
I downloaded service pack 2 on to my C drive and then copied it to a CD. My XP disk is at SP1. So I just installed this and then ran the SP 2 from the CD. I find that running them off the microsoft website is a non starter. I don't use Outlook Express because I have Office 2003 so I can use Outlook 2003 which has a junk filter. The biggest pain is relaoding all the software again such as two Epsom printers, antivirus, my camera software, mobile phone software, Nero, Broadband software and last but not least Flight Simulator 2002.
Happy restoration. Good luck