XP Log-in Freeze

[mbaldw]

Hi,

A friend of mine is having trouble with his computer.   Last night his Norton Anti-virus came up saying that it had detected a worm on his system, he clicked OK to delete the file and the computer froze.   Upon manually rebooting, it gets as far as the Windows Log-in screen (there are two user accounts on this XP Home system) and it freezes.   He has used his Recovery CD to "Repair" the OS, but now upon restarting, he is confronted with an option to 'Install Windows'.   He has some rather important files on his computer and (...of course::)...) he hasn't backed them up!   As he only has a Recovery CD I'm assuming that DELTREE and re-installation of XP is out of the question.   However, is it possible to navigate through and back-up crucial files onto floppy disk using something similar to DOS - does such a thing lurk under XP?   If so, how do you get to it?

I figured that you might be able to start Windows from a Boot Disk (i.e. Floppy), however, trying it on my machine I hit problems.   I have created a Boot Disk and booting up the computer with this disk in the drive recognises it as more than a rogue disk absent-mindedly left in the floppy drive.   However, all it does is brings me to an A:\ prompt.   I cannot, from here, move to C:\.   Also, I can see that the disk contains several files (EAG, EAG2, EAG3, KEYB, KEYBOARD, KEYBOARD2,3,4, MODE, COMMAND, DISPLAY, AUTOEXEC and CONFIG) but I don't know which to select to try and get into Windows.

As far as I can see, he's lost all his files and I envisage him having to do a Factory Restore.   However, before I break the bad news I thought I see if any of you technical genius's had any better ideas!   Thanks very much for your time.

Cheers,
Marc.

[pat]

Have you tried starting in safe mode, F8 at startup?

[Whizbang]

And if Safe Mode does not get you there, do not restore drive yet.
1)  Put it in another working computer with a compatible filing system (can't run an NTFS hard drive on a FAT32 OS setup) and an up-to-date antivirus program.  
2)  Run the problem hard drive as slave setup, and immediately run an antivirus check on it.  
3)  If files are visible, copy the valuable files to a Zip or CD before trying to recover the drive.  

If you can boot up in Safe Mode, run MSCONFIG to see what is loading at startup.  If the Safe Mode works, there likely has been a path alteration in bootup that will need to be found and methodically repaired.

Antivirus programs occasionally mis-identify legitimate files as viruses.  My Wingate networking program was continually pegged as Wingate virus before I pulled the networking cards in favor of a router/firewall setup.

[mbaldw]

Thanks for the input guys - I'll pass them on and see how it goes.
Cheers,
Marc.

[mbaldw]

Hello,

>>If you can boot up in Safe Mode, run MSCONFIG to see what is loading at startup.  If the Safe Mode works, there likely has been a path alteration in bootup that will need to be found and methodically repaired.<<

OK, my mate can start his XP Home system in Safe Mode (& even play games for an hour or more without any crashing).   However, trying to start in normal mode causes the system to freeze.  I've had a look at the programs starting on boot-up (in the Startup tab of msconfig) and I can't see anything wrong - from the details below, can anyone see anything obviously wrong?   If it make any consequence, there are two user accounts on this machine.

Many thanks for your time.
Cheers,
Marc.

MSCONFIG Start-up Item (& Command)

1. SiSUSbrg (C:\WINDOWS|SiSUSBrg.exe)
2. SOUNDMAN (SOUNDMAN.EXE)
3. NeroCheck (C:\WINDOWS\System32\NeroCheck.exe)
4. SOINTGR (C:\WINDOWS\SOINTGR.EXE)
5. lxbbbmgr ("C:\Program Files\Lexmark X74-X75\lxbbmgr.exe")
6. realsched ("C:\Program Files\Common Files\Real\Update_OB\"realsched.exe" -osboot)
7. WksSb (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Works\WksSb.exe/AllUsers)
8. qttask (C:\Program Files\QuickTime\qttask.exe" -atboottime
9. mmtask C:\Program Files\MUSICMATCH\MUSICMATCH Jukebox\mmtask.exe)
10. ByeByeAds (C:\Program Files\ByeByeAds\ByeByeAds.exe)
11. P2P Networking (C:\Windows\System32\PSP Networking\P2P Networking.exe/AUTOSTART
12. ccApp ("C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantech Shared\ccApp.exe")
13. Money Express (C: Program Files\Microsoft Money\System\Money Express.exe)
14. msnmsgr ("C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\msnmsgr.exe" /background
15. Microsoft Office (C:\PROGRA~\MI1933~1\Office\OSA9.EXE -b -l)
16. Microsoft Works (C:\PROGRA~\COMMON~1\MICROS~1\WORKSS~1\wkcalrem.exe

[Mark H]

Does the problem exists with both user accounts or just one? That can narrow it down as you can start looking for differences.

Mark H

[Andrew S]

You mentioned a boot disk,  Xp doesn have a single boot disk does it? I have previously used a win 98 boot disk in an xp home system and it gave me access to dos and i could access anything i wanted.  If you do put it in as a slave in a nother computer, it may till not let you get to any files.  I tried that one time previously, and it said "access denied".  I'm not sure how that computer is configured, but if it has really secure settings, that might not even work.  

[mbaldw]

I believe you can access both user accounts when the computer is running in Safe Mode, but you can't get into either when booting normally, because the computer freezes immediately after it has loaded the log on screen.

Regarding the boot disk, I have a floppy disk that has a load of file (downloaded from the internet) that purported to be able to start XP (should've known better really!).   It brought me to an A prompt, but everytime I tried to change to a C prompt, it would change it straight back to A:\

Cheers,
Marc.

[pat]

Sounds like a driver issue, has your friend updated any drivers recently?
Any yellow exclamation marks in device manager?
Also the boot menu offers a choice to load last know good configuration, did you try that?

[Whizbang]

ByeByeads has received a lot of criticism because of background adware installed.  Was this a conscious decision to install or is it a backdoor installation?  I would start by unchecking it from the Startup.

[mbaldw]

Thanks for the input guys, I'll pass it on.

Cheers,
Marc.