Is your Xp logging you straight out as soon as you click to login. Do you click your name and see your background flash up and then it says logging out straight away and takes you straight back to the main screen?
Then this article will help you through fixing it and why it happened in the first place, which is probably the bigger question youll be asking yourself.
Despite windows xp being particuarly vulnerable to its own self this problem is not caused by an error by windows, it is however caused by an infection which kindly deletes your userinit.exe file for you.
This to the average computer user probably means nothing, but basically this file contains windows system settings for each user on your machine. Deleting basically means it will no longer work hence the problem you are now facing.
One thing that worries us all when we hit a problem is ‘will I be able to get my files off my computer if i gave to wipe it’. Simple answer in this case is Yes.
A few days ago my girlfriends dad got a problem with his computer and came to us for help. Having never actually come accross this problem before i set about doing some research.
Okay onto the solutions
- Okay firstly you can do the following but you’ll need a spare computer or a mate. Remove your hard drive from your machine insert it into the spare machine or friends machine whatever you choose to do then boot up your friends computer making sure that your hard drive is the secondary drive. Now you’ll be able to navigate to my computer and select the good hard drive, ie the one thats on your mates computer or your spare computer from there youll need to do this click into WINDOWS Folder then – > System32
- The next solution is something rather more challenging for the average computer user however is also a very good solution and will enable you to do the above but without having to use another computer or a mates.
- SpyBot Search and Destroy – Excellent piece of malware detection software also FREE
- Spybot Search and Destroy
Then what youll need to do is simply hunt down the userinit.exe file from your good installation of windows copy it and paste it into your bad copy of windows on your other drive which can be achieved by very simply right click and copying and then right click paste into the bad installation.
Now if you put the hard drive back into your computer and boot it up. You will be able to log into your user again like normal and will have access to all of your files. If this works for you please skip to the last section titled Cleaning and keeping the computer safe.
You now need to locate on your bad hard drive the file called wsaupdater.exe which is also will be found if its present in the system32 folder on your bad installation hard drive ie the one with the original problem. Locate it and delete it.
Boot using your winxp cd.
Enter recovery console.
at the command prompt go to
C:/windows/system32
next type:
Dir *.exe
If you find, it, type
copy userinit.exe wsaupdater.exe
Exit and reboot normally. You should now be able to logon.
Run regedit
Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\
In the right pane, you should see
C:\WINDOWS\System32\wsaupdater.exe,
Change it so that it reads:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\userinit.exe
That should solve the problem, if the malware was the one that caused the issue.
3. The last solution we will talk about and by far the most permanent of solutions to the problem is to simply delete your windows partitition and install a fresh un-tainted copy of windows xp.
Youll probably find that if you have nothing particuarly that needs saving on the computer that this is really the best solution, so long as you remember to be more careful with what you download next time round tut tut!
Cleaning and looking after your computer
I would personally recommend and suggest taking a look at some of the below links if you need to clean your computer of virus’s and malware.
Malware
Spybot search and destroy – Great little program to delete unwanted spyware and trojans.
Super anti spy ware – Is another good program for the removal of malware and trojans.
Viruses
AVG free edition – Still highly recommended above others.
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