Windows XP Home does not load past Welcome page 1

[speedy987]

On booting up windows XP home ONLY boots up to my user account icons. When I press any one of my six account users, it then loads to the usual "Welcome" page with your user icon and doesn't load any further, just sitting on that page. If I do a Control-Alt-Delete, next to the account user icon it says, "loading your personal settings", but nothing loads, it just stays on that "Welcome" page.

This is a problem, because I can't even get into my files/tools/etc to do anything about it. In other words, I'm locked out.

I am thinking it may be a virus/worm/etc because my McAfee anti - virus is way out of date, but I regularily clean up with "Adaware" and windows devices. I take it I can't even reformat if I have to or save any files that I need.

Can anybody help??

 

[schtek]

try booting to safe mode F8

Stand up wherever you are, go to the nearest window and yell as loud as you can, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore.'

 

[speedy987]

I pressed F8, got the black screen, scrolled up to "Safe Mode" pressed enter.

A list of files started loading up......it then goes to the coloured Windows user account screen. I choose "Administrator" icon... it goes to a black screen with "safe mode" written in all four screen corners with one line at top reading: "Microsoft (R) Windows XP (R) (Build 2600.xpsp-sp2..........Service Pack 2)
but nothing further comes up.

I pressed enter, nothing happns..
I pressed F8, nothing happens..
I did control/alt/delete and the windows "Task Manager" box comes on screen with these headings Application-Processors-Performance­ --Networking-Users
One interesting thing is that my CPU usage under performance, continually reads 100% . Also there are approx 12 processes running in particular explorer.exe (CPU 50) and svchost.exe (CPU 50)

So where do I go from here??

can't understand the 100% CPU usage?

 

[smah]

The fact that you can get to the Task Manager means that the machine is running (extremely slow, but running). As a first step, you could try System Restore

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304449/en-us

If that doesn't work, I suggest starting again in Safe Mode as Administrator. It's possible that there is some virus activity going on, so make sure that any phone or network connections are disconnected. Be patient - with those processes like that, the machine will be extremely slow. Eventually, open a command prompt & run the following command: sfc /scannow Again, be patient. After it reboots, get some up to date antivirus & anti spyware software running - you can find a lot of info about these in the FAQ's sections of this forum, forum608, forum760 & several others.

If you can't get through that, the next step will probably need to be a reinstallation of Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/en-us

Steve

 

[speedy987]

Just to advise I have pulled the hard drive out of my desktop.
I have put it in an external hard drive adaptor and connected it via a USB port to my laptop.

It's come up as drive E in my laptop and I am currently cleaning it up with my up-to-date laptop McAfee virus deep scan. I am also doing an Ad-aware scan. So far the virus scanner has picked up approx 76 X "low level and unwanted" virus's. As I mentioned earlier, my desktop only had an out of date virus detector. Eg. virus's: "exploit WMF/JS Exploit/Joke-StressR/Crack-PVC/Adware-ISTB/GenericPUPa/Dialer-gen/Adware-pest/Uploader-R/Adware-gator/etc (some of which are trojans and spyware).

So I am deciding wether it is worth putting thr HD back into the troubled desktop to see if it will boot up properly.???
OR
Continue and do a re-format. (after saving wanted files on CD/DVD)

I might just try and put it back into the desktop without reformating, just out of curiosity now, to see if it works.

 

[speedy987]

OK NOW I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO

As I said i took my 60G seagate hard drive (with the virus's/damaged exe's) out of of my desktop and put it in a convertor case so that it will connect to my laptop via a USB port as drive E:. I used my laptop uptodate McAfee to clean all the bugs off. It was still unworkable WHEN I PUT IT BACK IN THE DESKTOP FOR A TRY BUT IT DIDN'T LOAD PROPERLY AGAIN because its lost to many exe commands. So I connected it (HD) back to the laptop and I got out about 15 GIG of data (letters/pics/videos/games) that I really need. After that I did two formats to clean and prepare the hard drive (via drive E: on my laptop) which took quite a while.

So I then take the HD out of the laptop convertor and re-install it in my desktop. I plug everything in and turn the desktop on.

I then insert the Windows XP Home CD into the CD/DVD rom to know do a complete reformat, the screen asks me to do a control/alt/del to boot the XP CD. It then goes to the WIN blue screen as it reads the CD. It gets to the WELCOME TO SETUP (BLUE SCREEN) AND ASKS ME TO EITHER:
1) SET UP WINXP (PRESS ENTER)
OR
2) REPAIR WINXP
OR
3) PRESS F8 TO QUIT INSTALL

I PRESS ENTER AND IT THEN GOES TO THE LICENSE AGREEMENT ASKING ME TO:
PRESS F8 TO AGREE
OR
SCROLL UP AND DOWN THE AGREEMENT
OR
PRESS ESC TO NOT AGREE

I PRESS F8 AND IT DOES NOT RESPOND (NOTHING), SO ALL I CAN DO IS PRESS ESC TO EXIT.

WHY IS F8 NOT RESPONDING???
I PUT THE XPCD IN THE OTHER DRIVE (LITE ON BURNER) TO SEE IF THE PROBLEM WAS PERHAPS THE CD/DVD ROM DRIVE, BUT EXACTLY THE SAME THING HAPPENED. MY XPCD IS GENUINE AND APPEARS TO BE IN GOOD ORDER.

WHAT CAN I DO FROM HERE, WHAT MIGHT BE WRONG IN MY ATTEMPT TO REFORMAT XP HOME ON A SUPPOSED NOW CLEAN FORMATTED HD??

 

[allteltec]

Try this or a differt key board.
How To: Accept Windows XP Setup License Agreement when F8 won't work.

"When installing Windows XP it brings up the License Agreement, and to accept press F8. I keep pressing F8 but it won't accept the License Agreement."

It's likely your keyboard has "F-Lock" enabled. It's trying to do the special function of whatever is on the F-Lock key instead of sending the "F8" keystroke.

Look for a key on your keyboard that says something like "F-Lock". Press it to "activate" (or "deactivate" as the case may be) and then press F8 ag

 

[speedy987]

Thanks,
I'll have a look, I was just about to pull it apart to see if it needed cleaning. My son likes "F-Lock"??

 

[speedy987]

For goodness sakes! F-lock was on! Windows is loading now!

 

[speedy987]

Yes! Have a nice clean machine now. Everything loaded OK on the reformat.
Thanks to all above for your help.

 

[allteltec]

Good way to go, if thay are badly infected. I cleaned one xp pro last week it was only at SP 1 DSL Modem 1.5meg download speed, no fire wall and norton ran out in 2004 and he could not figger out how he got so badly infected. I send 3 after noons cleaning the thing useing my Bert Pe CD. The problem is if you have a bad infection one AV program will not get all the problems. I ran Betdefender and Nod32 to clean 150+ Virus and trojens and when I ran Kaspersky it found 3 more and McAfee found one more. Same think with Spyware cleaning ran Ewido and SpySweeper to clean 500+ programs and then ran Spyboot S&D and Adaware and thay both found around 20 each. You would think things to be clean I ran Giant and it found 12 more. If you have the time and the tools you can clean and fix any think but who is going to pay you to spend 2 day to fix one computer.