Pegasus (MVP) said:
Previously I wrote that I was confused. Now I'm uneasy. Somehow
I feel that there is more to this problem than you have reported so
far. The fact that you could get into Safe Mode is absolutely crucial -
yet you omitted it from your first post until I pointed out some
discrepancies.
The problem of the logon process returning you to the logon screen
is well know, as is its solution. However, it is independent of Normal
Mode / Safe Mode. In other words, I have never heard of a machine
that would cycle in Normal Mode but that would log on normally
in Safe Mode.
Perhaps some other respondent can shed some light on this puzzle.
This would be a good time for you to lay ALL facts on the table,
not just a selection.
Your implication is that I'm somehow doing something illegal and that, for
that reason, I'm not being forthcoming. I can assure you that is not the
case. I have a legally purchased copy of XP Home, purchased in 2003 from
NewEgg, which I used for the initial install on the PC I built from scratch.
The disk includes SP1, but all the other upgrades had been made along the way.
I am a homebuilder and user and nowhere close to an expert on Windows XP. If
I omitted something in my original description, it was inadvertant.
I have no idea why things start going strange last week, but the first
problems were that I could not open Word or Excel, though Access and
PowerPoint continued to function well. When I couldn't get past the problems
last week, I wiped the hard drive, reinstalled everything from the original
disks, reactivated XP, downloaded updates, and everything ran fine for 3 days.
I was attempting to trouble shoot a connecting problem with one of my
laptops when my problems hit. First, XP informed me that it couldn't
recognize one of my USB drives, but that didn't concern me. I disconnected my
ethernet cable and plugged it into my laptop for troubleshooting. I
reconnected it, but didn't notice that I'd accidentally unplugged my keyboard
(wireless). When I couldn't get the keyboard to function, I tried restarting
the PC. At that point, the PC went into a loop - it would play the music,
open my start picture in the background, but before any icons came up, it
would bounce back to logging on. Since it was set to automatically logon,
this kept repeating, and repeating, and repeating.
I've had great success with system restore in the past, running it from Safe
Mode. I started the PC in safe mode and restored to the point at the
beginning of the day. That didn't solve my problems so i looked for an
earlier restore point, but XP said there were no other points.
That is where I went into the troubleshooter. I assumed all the hardware was
good, so I skipped by the part with turning the devices on and off. After
nothing else worked I went back to it. XP saw this as a major hardware change
since activation which caused me to reactivate my copy. Since I'd just done
that 3 days ago, I ended up with a live person explaining why I was doing it
so soon and verifying that this was the only PC this copy of XP is installed
on.
I tried the repair install (point 1, above) which didn't solve the problem.
I looked for an earlier restore point, but that didn't exist (guess the
repair install would wipe out the earlier restore points). Come to think of
it, it was probably here that I first looked for an earlier restore point.
Since nothing else was working, I went with option 3 - i went for a complete
reinstall.
I was unable to reformat my HDD from safe mode, so I restarted from the disk
and told it to do a complete reformat (not a quick reformat), then went
through all the tasks to restore the PC - XP install from disks and
registration/activation, software from disks, updates from the 'net, transfer
files back from the external HDD, etc. The one thing I did different this
time is that I installed Norton Anti-Virus before I installed anything
(except XP).
So, my need is overtaken by events, but I am curious what was going on and
if there might have been an easier way.
