Adobe KB article screws up XP Home system - no login

[JJ]

I was helping someone who has an XP Home system (Emachines). He was trying
to get a site to display that used Adobe Flash. He was sent to the Adobe
Flash downloads site, and it appeared that Flash installed but would not
display any Flash content.

After looking at several of the suggestions on the Adobe support site and
confirming that he had Administrator rights, we ended up at this KB article
on the Adobe site:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=fb1634cb

This article points to a download of an MS tool called SubInAcL and then has
you create a batch file that does:

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f

So I had him do this. It didn't fix the problem with Flash, but when he
restarted the PC it displays the XP logo but he now never receives a login.

Even pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del twice does not bring up a login window.

Other than a re-install/repair install, is there anything I might try?

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

I was helping someone who has an XP Home system (Emachines). He was
trying to get a site to display that used Adobe Flash. He was sent
to the Adobe Flash downloads site, and it appeared that Flash
installed but would not display any Flash content.

After looking at several of the suggestions on the Adobe support site
and confirming that he had Administrator rights, we ended up at this
KB article on the Adobe site:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=fb1634cb

This article points to a download of an MS tool called SubInAcL and
then has you create a batch file that does:

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f

So I had him do this. It didn't fix the problem with Flash, but when
he restarted the PC it displays the XP logo but he now never receives
a login.
Even pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del twice does not bring up a login window.

Other than a re-install/repair install, is there anything I might try?

Go into safe mode, and do a system restore.

 

[JJ]

Safe mode even will not allow a login or get to a Start button.


"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"

 

[Guest]

Likely your only optionhere woudl be to restore the registry from the
backup(s0 made by System Restore.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

To do this on a machine that won't boot you either need a Live CD OS
(Knoppix, Ubuntu, BartPE or WinPE) or else you need to slave the HD onto a
working system.

 

[JJ]

I ended up doing a repair install using an XP Home install CD that I had.

I would have done this from the start, but his crappy Emachines comes with
restore CD's that are ghosted images of the shipped hard drive - so there is
no option to do a repair install. You can only wipe the disk and do a
fresh install.