Win-Xp Pro hangs with a black, blank screen

[vj]

Problem: Windows XP (Pro) hangs shortly (say after a minute) after
starting, with a blank black screen.

Brief History:
I was playing around with some of the cracking softwares given to me by
my friend. It included a windows-xp cracker also (I believe this was
the curlprit which created all the problem (or might be some other
crack software). I just ran it out of curiosity, even though I had a
authentic copy of xp already installed.

Seemingly, the program ran but did nothing. However, the damage had
been done, and next time when I tried to login to windows, I got the
message-
"Windows product activation- a problem is preventing windows from
accurately checking the license for this computer. Error code
0x80004005"
I searched the newsgroups and got a few suggestions such as:

(1) start in safe mode and restore a system of a date former to the
problem : I tried this but this failed,
(2) start in safe mode, start/run regsvr32 regwizc.dll, start/run
regsvr32 licdll.dll, and then logoff and restart: I tried this, but
didn't work, got he same error message on login,
(3) start in safe mode, run regedt32.exe, delete following entries:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\software\microsoft\cryptography\providers
and HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-20\software\microsoft\cryptography\providers.
However, I couldn't find the folder Cryptography.

Ultimately, I tried to Repair Windows by using my authentic copy (boot
with CD and choose R option), again following the procedure given in
the newsgroups. I got the message while repair that "Fatal error:
failed installation for product catalogs" or something similar message.
Again, from the newsgroup, I got a tip to Shift+F10 at this message,
and rename Catroot2 to Catold and then retry repair.

I did this, and was successful this time, and I could log-in in Win xp
successfully now.

However, my happiness was short lived. Now, After the windows xp starts
successfully, after a minute or two, the pc hangs with a black blank
screen. Before going to hang stage, a popup appears on the taskbar,
saying "New hardware found", giving the name of my dialup modem
(Generic Ksoft 56). The dialup internet used to work fine before this
problem.
This happens in both the XP login accounts I have (one administrator,
one normal).
I have windows 98 also installed on the partition, and when I start
this instead of windows xp, there is no problem, and no modem is
detected, and internet connection works fine with the previous
settings.
Sorry, I have no idea whether I had either SP1 or SP2 installed on this
system. I have AMD athelon processor and 256 MB RAM.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ghostrider]

Problem: Windows XP (Pro) hangs shortly (say after a minute) after
starting, with a blank black screen.

Brief History:
I was playing around with some of the cracking softwares given to me by
my friend. It included a windows-xp cracker also (I believe this was
the curlprit which created all the problem (or might be some other
crack software). I just ran it out of curiosity, even though I had a
authentic copy of xp already installed.

Seemingly, the program ran but did nothing. However, the damage had
been done, and next time when I tried to login to windows, I got the
message-
"Windows product activation- a problem is preventing windows from
accurately checking the license for this computer. Error code
0x80004005"
I searched the newsgroups and got a few suggestions such as:

(1) start in safe mode and restore a system of a date former to the
problem : I tried this but this failed,
(2) start in safe mode, start/run regsvr32 regwizc.dll, start/run
regsvr32 licdll.dll, and then logoff and restart: I tried this, but
didn't work, got he same error message on login,
(3) start in safe mode, run regedt32.exe, delete following entries:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\software\microsoft\cryptography\providers
and HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-20\software\microsoft\cryptography\providers.
However, I couldn't find the folder Cryptography.

Ultimately, I tried to Repair Windows by using my authentic copy (boot
with CD and choose R option), again following the procedure given in
the newsgroups. I got the message while repair that "Fatal error:
failed installation for product catalogs" or something similar message.
Again, from the newsgroup, I got a tip to Shift+F10 at this message,
and rename Catroot2 to Catold and then retry repair.

I did this, and was successful this time, and I could log-in in Win xp
successfully now.

However, my happiness was short lived. Now, After the windows xp starts
successfully, after a minute or two, the pc hangs with a black blank
screen. Before going to hang stage, a popup appears on the taskbar,
saying "New hardware found", giving the name of my dialup modem
(Generic Ksoft 56). The dialup internet used to work fine before this
problem.
This happens in both the XP login accounts I have (one administrator,
one normal).
I have windows 98 also installed on the partition, and when I start
this instead of windows xp, there is no problem, and no modem is
detected, and internet connection works fine with the previous
settings.
Sorry, I have no idea whether I had either SP1 or SP2 installed on this
system. I have AMD athelon processor and 256 MB RAM.

Any help would be appreciated.

Given the circumstances, the repair was not entirely perfect
but good enough to get the computer started and apparently to
a point where something might be trying to dial out. The last
characteristic is more typical of a spyware or trojan resident
in the system (and might not even have been touched by the
repair process). With Win98 installed, start the computer in
Win98 and do the usual anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware
and anti-trojan scans. Might get lucky.

 

[Guest]

When playing with fire make sure you don't get burnt. Restore system from
your backup. Don't have a backup? Then reinstall fresh copy.

 

[vj]

Thankyou for your replies.
I did anti-virus, anti-spy etc as suggested by Ghostrider, but no
success.

Regarding the suggestion by twf48079, unfortunately I don't know how to
do restore from backup, any help on this would be appreciated .
The good news is that the original problem has been solved now, I ran
the Norton Systemworks windows registry scan, it found and fixed 27
errors in the scan. This solved the problem. I am surprised to see that
the problem was not solved by running windows xp Repair.