After not using my laptop for several weeks, I used it and it immediately set about updating my Norton anti virus and Windows via auto update. After rebooting, the system now briefly goes to my desktop and then automatically logs off.
When I click on my user icon to log back on, I can watch the text under the icon say "loading your personal settings" (or something like that) and then suddenly change to "logging off - saving your settings" (or similar) and I'm back where I started - at the log on screen.
Starting in safe mode leads to the same thing. How does one bypass this? By the way, I do not have a log on password set for this, as I am the only user of the laptop.
Any help would be appreciated.
Difficult
Fri, 2009-02-13 18:12 by admin
That's a difficult one, because you can't get in in the first place, so you can't do anything.
The cause is that your personal profile, typically at
is either clobbered or misplaced. A frequent cause of this behavior is that your drive letter has changed, which prevents Windows from finding parts of your profile. Unfortunately it is not very simple to find out whether it's the drive letter or something else that changed for the worse.
First try to log on as Administrator. Windows by default has this account, which works with an independent profile. If you can log on as Administrator, then your normal profile is defective, but the Administrator profile and the drive letter are OK. That's something to start with. You can then, for example, create an entirely new user and profile, then salvage bits and pieces from the defective profile.
If you cannot log in as Administrator either, then you may have caught the wrong drive letter. This is more difficult to solve, but once it's solved, at least you get everything back as if nothing had ever happened. The article How to change a drive letter explains it in its last chapter.
Good luck—the procedure is not for the faint-hearted. But I've done it a number of times and know that it works.
It worked !
Wed, 2009-09-09 17:14 by TomazPessanha
Thank you for this post.
I struggle during 2 days with this problem but following your instructions ("How to Change a drive letter") .. it's finally working!
It's really not for faint-hearted, but it's easy and certainly not worthless ...
Thank you again.
Glad to hear
Wed, 2009-09-09 21:16 by admin
That's good to hear. Changing drive letters are a very awkward problem. In the worst case you cannot log on or perhaps not even boot.
But when you manage to change the drive letter back to what it was and should be, the computer instantly springs back to completely normal life.
Unwanted Automatic Logoff
Sun, 2009-02-15 13:25 by rdee
Thank you for your quick reply
After doing a little more research, here is what I've narrowed it down to:
As some others have found out, it involves a missing Userinit.Exe reference in the registry (specifically HKey_Local\ Software\Miccrosoft\WinNT\Current\WinLogon [not exactly typed here])
I made sure there was a copy of Userinit.exe in C:\Windows\System32 but still won't logon.
I obtained Spotmau's utility to edit the registry outside of Windows and here is what I got so far: The registry key "UserInit" is missing in the WinLogon section (the key itself and the string) When I try to add the key, the editor tells me the key already exists and refuses to make it. When I try to delete the key the editor also refuses. I suspect there is an index reference pointing to the key, although the key itself is gone. Evidently the registry has become slighly corrupted. Yet it is only slightly because the computer will boot normally otherwise. The only glitch so far is when I try to logon, I get logged off right away and sent back to the logon screen.
Access rights?
Sun, 2009-02-15 14:55 by admin
I have an entry named Userinit with a REG_SZ value of C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe, and the final comma is actually included, apparently a harmless bug.
One possible cause beside registry corruption is access rights. Perhaps something has taken your access right to that value or the entire key away. Can you create some other value?
You may want to take your hard disk to another computer and change the registry there by loading the SOFTWARE hive temporarily to change it.
By the way, this looks a bit suspicious. Malware like key loggers or just any virus or Trojan could use this hook as an entry point to get loaded. You may want to copy a fresh Userinit.exe from a clean computer to the one in question.
Unwanted Logoff
Sun, 2009-02-15 18:48 by rdee
Thanks again for your time.
As for the missing key, I believe the SOFTWARE hive is a bit corrupted. When I started up my laptop, the last time it worked, four or five programs started attempting to download updates, including Norton, Windows, Logitch, HP (the laptop is a Compaq). There may have been others. At any rate, the computer hung-up and I had to do a hard reboot. Since then I have had the Logon-Logoff Loop preventing me from enerting the windows desktop.
What I think I need is to run a registry cleaner on the SOFTWARE hive which would resolve the broken link - either fixing it or removing it altogether - which would allow me to enter the correct key and string (as in your reply above) via a registry editor.
The problem is, I don't know of any registry cleaner that would run from the Windows repair console.
One possible idea I had was this: Put the corrupted registry in a temporary location. Move the windows\repair registry to System32, reboot and then repair the corrupted registry in its temporary location. I don't know if there is any registry cleaner\fixer that will let you open a copy of the registry from a selected location.
If I was able to do this I would then move the fixed registry back to system32. I am trying to avoid haveing to reinstall all my programs. But if you have any further ideas or see where I am not thinking things thru correctly, I am open to any suggestions.
Again, Thank you
Robert Dee
Move disk to another computer
Sun, 2009-02-15 19:09 by admin
I believe you can repair the registry only when you're booted into a different operating system installation. You can either boot into something like BartPE or connect the hard disk to another computer.
Then the method is as I already mentioned, load the hive. You will then see whether the registry is accessible normally or whether there still is a problem. You may be able to change the access rights as well. Good luck!