Help with XP problem please

sasenach

My son's managed to b*gger up his system access and I'd really appreciate some help in sorting this out. He has XP Pro and XP Office Pro on his computer. XP launches to the welcome page with an icon showing his name. When he clicks this, XP confirms that it applying his personal settings and then immediately confirms it is saving his personal settings and logs him off. Here's what I've tried so far (and hasn't worked):

• A repair from the installation disk (I received 2 error messages- "C:\windows\system 32\net comm.dll file not installed or corrupted" and C:\program files\outlook express\msoe.dll file not installed or corrupted")
• Launching the recovery consol from the installation disk (haven't been able to do this as it's asking for a system administrator password and I don't remember setting one)
• Taking the hard drive out and adding it as a slave to my PC to back up his files.

When I did this, my anti virus software immediately quarantined a trojan on his drive (McAfee simply described this as a generic trojan) in his system 32 files. However, I wasn't able to access or copy any of the documents in "My Documents" as I was told the path had been changed or the folder password protected.

Before I take the nuclear route and reformat his hard drive, can anyone suggest how I can fix this or at least save the documents he has on his hard drive first, please.

Thanks

Browntoa

administrator password is normally blank (unless you set one)

try an Ubuntu CD to boot your PC with his drive as a slave , will avoid any chance of infections on yours and may allow you to access his documents ( unless he had a password on his user profile )

sasenach

Hi Browntoa,

Thanks for your comments. I tried accessing without using a password, but this didn't work. I must have set one when installing and forgotton about this.

Can you tell me what a Ubuntu CD is, please- I've not heard of these.

Thanks

Browntoa

download here

http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

32bit version: This works with most computers


burn to CD

its an ISO (image) file , you can burn this using IMGBURN

http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

then make sure your PC boots from CD/DVD drive first by going into bios

sasenach

Thanks for your help- I've give it a try.

Cheers

RobTang

try this ?

http://moniroth.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/best-way-to-fix-windows-xp-auto-log-off-after-login/

andrewrimmer

Press F8 on a restart and start in safe mode, maybe there you can remove a admin password, also do a virus scan here