Administrator/Owner start up

[D.C. Worm]

I have a HP Pavilion 510n. Windows XP will not load
personal settings and start from owner or administrator
icon, When I click on them They start (Loading you
personal settings) then immediately shut down and return
to Icon. I have tried everthing from Bios to Boot changes.
It was working fine until the wife re-booted. Now (even in
the Safe mode) all I get is the owner and Administrator
icon. I have hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the log on screen
but I never put a password in. Please help I've been up
all night and at a complete loss.

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

You will need a retail/bootable XP CD, not a Recovery disk to perform this operation.

Boot with the XP CD (assuming you have a retail version, and not an OEM "Recovery" CD). Begin Setup. You'll be given the option to Repair an existing installation. Select this option. This takes you into Recovery Console. You'll be prompted for the Administrator password. If there is a password on this account, you will need to remember it. This is not the password for any "administrator" level account, it is the password for THE Administrator account.

Once in the Recovery Console, enter the following commands:

CD System32
COPY USERINIT.EXE WSAUPDATER.EXE

Reboot the computer. You should now be able to log on. Once you have, click Start, run and enter REGEDIT Go to:

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

Look in the right pane for the Userinit value. Double click the Userinit value and change it to C:\Windows\System32\userinit.exe, The comma on the end is intentional, and it must be there. Now, if desired, you can delete the WSAUPDATER.EXE copy that you created.

http://www.lavahelp.com/articles/v6/04/06/0901.html
Unable to Log On To Windows XP After Removing wsaupdater.exe