system going into standby after CTRL-ALT-Delete screen

[Guest]

I have an offsite user who turned on her computer this morning. It booted up
to the CTRL-ALT-Delete Screen. As soon as she pressed the CTRL-ALT-Delete
the system said it was preparing to go into standby. The screen then goes
black.

I have had her power down completely. We unplugged all cables then plugged
them back in. We tried pressing the power button to come out of standby but
the CTRL-ALT-Delete screen reappears and puts her back in standy.

I also tried getting her into Safe Mode with F8 several times but the system
kept going back to the CTRL-ALT-Delete screen.

The system is a 3 year old Dell Optiplex running XP Pro with SP2 with 256K
of memory. It worked fine up until this morning.

I've searched the KB extensively and could not find any examples of this
happening.

Suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Sounds like she set a password on the machine or someone else did. During a
safe mode boot she should get the option screen to log on as Administratorif
there are multiple accounts present. If so she'll need to copy her existing
data into a new account to be on the safe side and try that user profile as
the default profile. Its a PITA task but its safe.

 

[Guest]

I really don't think the password is the problem. The user wouldn't know how
to set a password. She said she shutdown as usual.

 

[Guest]

My computer is also randomly going in to stand-by mode without me asking it
to... this is at any time while I am doing anything. The only explanation I
can think of is a new virus perhaps?