Looping back to logon after loading personal settings

[ryled]

Hey all

So there was a power outage at my office while I was gone over the weekend, and I think I left my computer on by accident as I sometimes do that.

The upshot of it all is that while I can log on, it loads my settings and then goes back to the logon screen. There is no dialogue box saying it's logging my user out, or anything like that, but since it does boot up, I'm assuming the motherboard isn't fried.

Maybe I got hit with a virus while it was sleeping?

In any case, I even started it in safe mode and logged on as "Administrator," but even then it just went back to the logon screen.

Anyone have any ideas...? I keep that computer around to run my shipping program as the other computer I use for communications is bogged down with all sorts of bells and whistles all the internet apps throw on your computer automatically with their various and sundry updates, and I wanted it to remain trustworthy, so I don't even really internet with it.

And I'd hate to wipe it and start from scratch as I'd lose the shipping logs since the last back-up a while back.

 

[vacunita]

You may want to try a Recovery Console repair. You'll need your install CD. Boot the machine from the CD and:

Starting the Windows Recovery Console
To start the Windows Recovery Console, use any of the following methods:

* Start your computer with the Windows Setup floppy disks, or with the Windows CD-ROM. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press F10, or press R to repair, and then press C (Windows 2000 only) to start the Windows Recovery Console. Select the appropriate number for the Windows installation that you want to repair, and then type the administrator password. If the administrator password does not exist, just press ENTER.

Once in the recovery console issue the following command:

chkdsk /p /r
Let it do its thing. hopefully it should repair the files and let you log in.

Your data and apps should remain untouched.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229716

Alternatively you can attempt an in-place install to overwrite system files with fresh working copies from install media.

This will also not harm files or apps, but will remove any installed updates and patches from MS so you'll need to download and install those again.

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.