login, again

[Guest]

Ok, I had this problem a few weeks ago. When I turn on my computer, it goes
fine until it gets to the login screen with the "loading your personal
settings...". However, it then proceeds to "saving your personal
settings..." and continues this endless loop. I eventually "fixed" it by
doing a repair installation of Windows XP Pro and then copying all my files
to another HDD. However, when I rebooted the computer, the same thing
happened. So since I had already backed-up all my files, I decided to format
the drive and install a fresh copy of Windows. Alright, so everything went
fine, until it happened to my laptop. When I do a repair install, I only
have one chance to do anything and then it goes into the endless loop again
on the next boot. My problem is that I am unable to backup the files from my
laptop so I can install a fresh copy of windows. My laptop has no additional
HDD, no room on the current HDD to make a backup partition, no CD-R/RW drive,
and my NIC won't function until I re-install the drives and re-boot. I have
disabled everything that starts-up when windows does and have tried booting
into safe-mode, neither of which has helped.

Both times I have experienced this problem were right after allowing a
Windows Automatic Update to install.

 

[gerryf]

Well, uh, large....

We could probably monkey with it for a while, and I guess you tried the old
safe mode with networking...sounds to me like your reasonably technically
inclined so let's take the easy way out

Make yourself a Pre-installation disk with Bart's PE builder

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

If your lukcy, the netowrk card in your laptop is already built in, if not,
you'll have to look for a plug in or build one. Eitherway, this will allow
you to build a PE disk that will load a windows subset from a CD, then move
your files to a safe place on your network.