windows won't login

[Guest]

Using Windows XP Home with two user accounts set-up. Neither account is
password protected. Turn on machine, click on a user to log-in (doesn't
matter which user) then it goes to the next screen with the user name and
icon and says "Loading your personal settings..." and just hangs there. Have
booted up to safe mode and checked for adware, spyware and viruses, but after
reboot have the same thing. Does anyone have a solution other than an
outright reformat. Thanks

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

So you can load Safe mode ok then, right? That means something loading in
Normal mode is malfunctioning or conflicting, so you need to sort it out.
This can help:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310560

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Lawrence J. Gardner]

For a test, create a Test User, limited account. Login in twice, once to
create, another as normal operations and see if it hangs.

If it doesn't, something in the other accounts. If so, something in Default
User account when creating new user or something in All accounts (including
Admin) that only operates correctly with Admin privileges.

You can also turn on Windows XP debugging mode, and see what is wrong. It
logs into C:\Windows\Debug\Usermode\userenv.log
It shows what is run at startup time and login.

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

UserEnvDebugLevel DWORD 30002 (hex)

Also, you can turn on verbose mode:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

verbosestatus DWORD 1
This will show on the screen when you login ... watch and see what sequences
it takes.

Remember to turn these off when done.