you can download the xp disk and burn it to re-format your computer. ive left my email address, if you need specific instructions on how to do so.lifeisagame @ hotmail. co. uk

PDUB,

Thanks for the thorough response. I didn't explain myself clearly, I apologize for that. As a side note, I have a fair amount of experience and have reinstalled Windows on dozens of machines, but I am not an expert or even a veteran by any means. I'm the friend "who knows computers."

The machine's symptoms were boot to welcome screen (where user selects profile). Upon selecting the profile (there was only one) the machine would flash the desktop (no icons) and then return to the Welcome screen saying "Saving settings . . ." and then sit there as if I had not clicked on anything. I could shut down, but never properly attain the desktop. Before this, the user said they had accidentally clicked on something while browsing and a bunch of pop-ups started showing up.

I figured it was a virus of some sort and my first order of business was to boot to Safe mode. Upon doing this, the safe mode boot (after selecting Safe Mode and not Safe Mode with prompt or network) was to boot to welcome screen and now show two profiles - Admin and the User. I've tried both profiles and both act as mentioned above - a quick flash of the desktop screen sans icons and then back to the welcome screen.

I can't say that I've seen this before, so I figured the virus messed up the HD royally. I then removed the boot HD, he has two in the machine, a second larger HD for maintaining his work, and put the boot HD into a USB HD kit to read it from another machine (also the User said there may be some data on the machine that he needed). So after checking the drive, it came up fine as an external USB drive, I put it back in and did a Win XP install (repair), this went fine (as far as I could tell), but upon final booting of the machine, it had the same behavior as mentioned above. Welcome Screen only.

So I said, bugger that. I bought and put in a new drive. I had to change BIOS to boot from CD. This worked fine an Win XP (full version) started to install. It wanted to format the new drive. Good. I chose NTFS and after formatting it copied over the Win XP installation files. After copying over the files, I get a 15 second (red bar) countdown that says it will reboot automatically. As I remember, this is normal. Upon reboot it starts using the files it copied over to HD.

Well, when it did reboot, the BIOS has the "Boot from CD: . . . ." message, which usually means press any key if you want to boot from CD. I didn't press anything but the system boots from the CD as if the driver were new. It wants to start the XP installation from the VERY beginning. So I went into BIOS and changed boot order again to HD first. This didn't change the outcome. So then I changed BIOS again to say HD only, and it still boots from CD.

I am starting to wonder if the Mobo IDE controller has gone bad. I think the mobo is about 4 years old. The user does not have the documentation for it.

What I currently still need to try:
Checking the original boot HD in another machine with a virus checker. (Another thing I noticed about the drive was in the Documents and Settings directory -where profiles are stored - the user had about 10 different profiles that looked like automatic bastardizations of his original name. Not sure how else to explain it. As if Win XP was trying to boot but couldn't so made a new profile similar to old one).

Removing battery from mobo - to reset BIOS.

The mobo has a second IDE controller slot (where his two DVD drives are attached). I thought I might detach these, and hook up original drive only to see if it can boot from that controller.

And to answer you question, I couldn't get into Safe mode, so that is what prompted all this other action. I may have a situation where a virus and a hardware failure are occurring at the same time.

Thanks again for reading and for helping!

Hello,

It often happens that some computers that has been dormand has these problems since windows has not been updating .


Best is to re-install Windows and update your system.

I have the same problem, but I have the disk and correct activation code. I am stuck bad......any suggestions??

I have seen this problem and it sounds like some kind of virus ,boot or Bios . I have only seen it in PC's with older MB's and not in one with dual bios chips. I am working on another PC with the welcome screen problem now ,so I will let you guys know what I find.

If your keyboard is not working when trying to boot in safe mode all you need to do is enable the USB Emulation option in Bios.... F2 for Bios

when i turn ob my computer all i get is a orange screen with start on left side and icons on the right. no icons appear on the opening page ? please help. i have tried every thing suggested except throwing it out the window. please respond asap.thank you

at FIrst u have to do "change the motherboard battery".
or remove the battery and after half an hour reinsert in the same locatiion.
this is the utlimate solution

Switch on PC and keep pressing F8 till u get that SafeMode screen. Choose Load Last known Good Config of XP. Try that and see.

There are many things you can do other than that. Try removing all peripheral not needed devices.

* REMOVE RAMS - one by one. (Eg: if u got two RAMs remove one and try to boot, if that fails remove it and try booting after plugging in the other)

* REMOVE VGAs. (if u got onboard graphics enable it through BIOS and remove your VGA card and try to boot)

* REMOVE all Harddrives except the one you got Windows on.

* REMOVE Drivers of hardware devices and also software's like disk managment applications etc.

* You can also try and see whether there are malicious software at boot - u can check how to do dat here - http://windowsxpproblem.blogspot.com/2009/02/edit-windows-xp-startup-items.html

* One last thing, try to fix your master boot record. - see how to do it here http://windowsxpproblem.blogspot.com/2009/01/fixing-your-master-boot-record.html

go bios setting and fuck up lol worked for me

I made my own coustimized computer and i dont have a key or a disk help me!

Well it seems there is a lot of this happening but not a lot of solutions.

I have had this same problem happen on 4 different computers within the last 24 hours!

All are running XP Pro, all machines are less than 12 months old (one is only 2 weeks old!)

Yesterday i had a call from a family member saying the pc (Running XP Pro) wont go past the user log in screen. It shows the desktop but with no icons, then goes to "Welcome" screen and then shows the user accounts. (Which is unusual as the pc does not usually require login). Once you click on the user account it quickly shows "loggin on" and the immediately switches to "logging off".

I have tried a repair install of XP but it did not fix the problem.

This morning my own pc has done exactly the same thing, and i then received calls from 2 other family members reporting the same fault on their pc's.

Thats 4 pc's with the same fault within 24 hours!


Surely this has to be virus related?

I would love to just reinstall windows, however I do not have the disk, I have the key, just not the disk.

I was told by my kids that the computer was not working well before the last time we used it in June. So I guess this is a long time problem (its the kids internet computer)

Any other suggestions?

Chances are its a simple mistake like the time and date is incorrect, i have had this problem on several other computers i have seen. Best thing to do is...

Boot into Safe Mode when the computer gets passed the Bios press F8
Boot into safe mode, the computer should boot up as normal asking which account you would like
to login to [USERS] or Admin
Login to the user as your normally would, check the date is correct if not adjust accordingly.

Restart the computer, and it should be working.

my mom is having a similar problem with her computer. she just recently got it from my grandmother and its an older comp. its worked slow but decently for years now. She got it and downloaded internet explorer 8 onto it and once she rebooted it, it wont go past the start-up screen. she has a disc to reformat it and the key but the computer wont turn the disc at all. and she cant get it to do anything. anyone know what she could do? would be awesome if we could get the comp to work seeing as she doesnt have the money to get a new one.

I had a similar problem. My computer my power cord came undone whilst i was logged on and when I restarted the computer after 2 weeks holiday it did not load past the logon page. (mouse not moving and keyboard inactive)

I removed the motherboard battery for a few minutes and put it back in. This fixed the issue.

best of luck to you all

My fiance's computer got a virus. So I ran a sweep and it found some very harmful stuff. It kept popping up with svchost.exe error 0x7d4caa9b throughout the entire process. After trying to restart the computer I did get a start key in the bottom but it would not go to anything. Now it has gone pass the welcome screen and nothing. Just the background pic of the dog. No start screen no icons nothing. Any suggestions!

this happened too me this morning after i put a digtial cam driver disc in, it installed and then asked me to restart pc, so i clicked the ok button to restart, and it didnt even get pass log in, it takes me to the option of load safe mode etc, which i can move arrows, however it dont load in any mode at all.

last time i had a funny problem like this was when windows did a auto update and screwed my system up a few months back it took 4 days to iron out no idea how it was fixed last time,(problem was video card update driver didnt like new windows update)i was able to get into safe mode, and try a FEW THINGS OUT BUT NOT THIS PROBLEM ATM.

on a side note i havnt used the desk top pc as much the last 3 weeks only been using the laptop in bed after long shift work.

ill try the battery tomorrow, only things i tired so far are which loading options to rom from hd and back to hd, no luck, even tired removing plugs to all hardware no luck,

i beleive in my case adding the driver for my cam screwed the pc up and removed some windows data, who knows.

My problem was caused by the anti-virus i was using finding a 'false positive' and moving the windows logon file into quarrantine. Without this file in the correct location it was unable to login after a reboot.

I remove the drive and plugged it into another pc as a slave HDD that was also running XP.

C:\windows\system32 folder should have a file called USERINIT. This is the file that had been quarrantined by the anti virus.

Copy if from the 'good' pc intoi the same location on your HDD and then put it the HDD back in your pc. Your problem should be fixed.

It will have had nothing to do with installing your camera software, except that it forced a reboot and this file was missing.

Good luck