XP Not Loading Correctly

[Guest]

A few days ago my IE was shutting down by itself and I started to get a
warning on virtual memory ( I have 512mb of RAM and my HDD wasnt full) and I
couldnt defrag or go to control panel. Before that I had also gotten virus
warnings and AVG wouldnt load anymore. I decided to just reinstall windows
(although I didnt erase the HDD). All was well and those problems stopped,
but now XP doesnt load correctly. The task bar, start menu and such are the
same color as they would be in Safe Mode. I tried booting in Safe Mode and
switching it back but it doesnt work. Also, one day I got a message that
Windows couldnt tell if this was a licensed version, which it is. I am the
only user on the PC and during that incident it had 2 accounts listed,
Administrator and my user name, but those are the same and should have been
one account. Any ideas to fix these problems?? Or do you think its linked to
the previous issues and I need to erase the HDD and reinstall XP again?
Thanks for any assistance.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

A few days ago my IE was shutting down by itself and I started to get a
warning on virtual memory ( I have 512mb of RAM and my HDD wasnt full) and I
couldnt defrag or go to control panel. Before that I had also gotten virus
warnings and AVG wouldnt load anymore. I decided to just reinstall windows
(although I didnt erase the HDD). All was well and those problems stopped,
but now XP doesnt load correctly. The task bar, start menu and such are the
same color as they would be in Safe Mode. I tried booting in Safe Mode and
switching it back but it doesnt work. Also, one day I got a message that
Windows couldnt tell if this was a licensed version, which it is. I am the
only user on the PC and during that incident it had 2 accounts listed,
Administrator and my user name, but those are the same and should have been
one account. Any ideas to fix these problems?? Or do you think its linked to
the previous issues and I need to erase the HDD and reinstall XP again?
Thanks for any assistance.

I don't think you re-installed Windows - you probably
just installed it over the top of the existing installation,
thus retaining most if not all of the existing problems.
I suggest you back up all your important files, then
allow the disk to be formatted before installing Windows.

At the same time you might split your disk into two
partitions. This would let you keep your data files on
drive D:, thus making a subsequent re-installation of
Windows much less painful.

 

[Guest]

A few days ago my IE was shutting down by itself and I started to get a
warning on virtual memory ( I have 512mb of RAM and my HDD wasnt full) and I
couldnt defrag or go to control panel. Before that I had also gotten virus
warnings and AVG wouldnt load anymore. I decided to just reinstall windows
(although I didnt erase the HDD). All was well and those problems stopped,
but now XP doesnt load correctly. The task bar, start menu and such are the
same color as they would be in Safe Mode. I tried booting in Safe Mode and
switching it back but it doesnt work. Also, one day I got a message that
Windows couldnt tell if this was a licensed version, which it is. I am the
only user on the PC and during that incident it had 2 accounts listed,
Administrator and my user name, but those are the same and should have been
one account. Any ideas to fix these problems?? Or do you think its linked to
the previous issues and I need to erase the HDD and reinstall XP again?
Thanks for any assistance.

Before that I had also gotten virus warnings and AVG wouldnt load anymore.
Reinstalling windows without a format WILL NOT get rid of the virus AVG gave
a warning about.You still have the Virus!

A link for free online virus and trojan scanners.
http://virusall.com/downscan.html

 

[Guest]

Ok, thank you both very much for the input. I appreciate it. I figured that
might be the case. I'll do it correctly this time.

 

[Guest]

Ok Im back...I reformatted the HDD and reinstalled windows. The computer
loaded correctly and everything...it even did a few restarts. I booted the
computer up a while ago and guess what...same problem, the task bar and other
XP related windows are the color of safe mode. Also that picture they put by
your user name on the start menu, doesnt appear. For the heck of it, I
switched users even tho it was only me and that brought blue to the top of
the start menu where the picture should be but that was it. If its a virus,
its obviously still there somewhere on the HDD. I did a virus scan with
mcafee and it didnt find anything. I will try another virus scan with another
program to see if it finds anything. Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[Seafarer]

A few days ago my IE was shutting down by itself and I started to get a
warning on virtual memory ( I have 512mb of RAM and my HDD wasnt full) and I
couldnt defrag or go to control panel. Before that I had also gotten virus
warnings and AVG wouldnt load anymore. I decided to just reinstall windows
(although I didnt erase the HDD). All was well and those problems stopped,
but now XP doesnt load correctly. The task bar, start menu and such are the
same color as they would be in Safe Mode. I tried booting in Safe Mode and
switching it back but it doesnt work. Also, one day I got a message that
Windows couldnt tell if this was a licensed version, which it is. I am the
only user on the PC and during that incident it had 2 accounts listed,
Administrator and my user name, but those are the same and should have been
one account. Any ideas to fix these problems?? Or do you think its linked to
the previous issues and I need to erase the HDD and reinstall XP again?
Thanks for any assistance.

When XP detects a system problem it will try to reboot the
computer.Disable the automatic restarting sequence.My
Computer/Properties/Advanced/ in the third settings under startup and
recovery remove the tick from Automatically restart/OK then OK
again.See if that works.Incidently I always have this unchecked to
stop restarts.Regards

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for your time and help seafarer. I'll do that.