XP Laptop not booting

[Subrata Das]

Hi,
My XP Dell Laptop is not Booting. I have been using the
laptop for the past one year and I have not faced any
problems. Yesterday, when I started my laptop, it did not
boot and shows a blue screen with "Microsoft Windows XP"
written on it. It does not go to the login screen. I tried
running the Dell Diagnostics but those tests reported no
errors. I think it must be some software problem with XP.
In my last use, I used a downloaded spy removal software
to remove some spy programs installed on my machine. This
software removed some installed files and also removed
some registry entries. I hope this spy removal s/w did not
cause this problem. What can I do to recover my machine ?
Thanks in advance
Subrata

 

[Malke]

Hi,
My XP Dell Laptop is not Booting. I have been using the
laptop for the past one year and I have not faced any
problems. Yesterday, when I started my laptop, it did not
boot and shows a blue screen with "Microsoft Windows XP"
written on it. It does not go to the login screen. I tried
running the Dell Diagnostics but those tests reported no
errors. I think it must be some software problem with XP.
In my last use, I used a downloaded spy removal software
to remove some spy programs installed on my machine. This
software removed some installed files and also removed
some registry entries. I hope this spy removal s/w did not
cause this problem. What can I do to recover my machine ?
Thanks in advance
Subrata

It is possible that you had the Blazefind malware. It replaces the
userinit string in the registry with "wsaupdater", and then you can't
get into Windows. If you can get into Safe Mode (long shot), try this:

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

Userinit string value should be:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,

On the damaged installations it's one of these:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\wsaupdater.exe,
C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,C:\WINDOWS\system32\wsaupdater.exe,

Note the trailing comma, which should be there.

If you can't get into Safe Mode, boot with the XP cd, load the Recovery
Console, and copy userinit.exe as wsaupdater.exe from the command
prompt, then restart normally. Once in, go and change the registry
value back to what it's supposed to be and delete the copied file.

Good luck,

Malke

 

[Rock]

Hi,
My XP Dell Laptop is not Booting. I have been using the
laptop for the past one year and I have not faced any
problems. Yesterday, when I started my laptop, it did not
boot and shows a blue screen with "Microsoft Windows XP"
written on it. It does not go to the login screen. I tried
running the Dell Diagnostics but those tests reported no
errors. I think it must be some software problem with XP.
In my last use, I used a downloaded spy removal software
to remove some spy programs installed on my machine. This
software removed some installed files and also removed
some registry entries. I hope this spy removal s/w did not
cause this problem. What can I do to recover my machine ?
Thanks in advance
Subrata

In addition to Malke's suggestion see if this could help. It's similar
to your situation:

Computer stops responding with a black screen when you start Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=314503