Member Avatar for slash49er

Hope someone can help me out here. I am running an old PIII 400, 512 Ram, XP SP2 and it freezes right after the Welcome screen. I see the Welcome screen for approx 2 mins. and then it goes to a blue screen and just hangs there. I see the mouse and am able to move it but there is nothing but a blue screen. If I hit ctrl+alt+del I will get a pop up box saying TAK MANAGER HAS BEEN DISABLED BY YOUR ADMIN, but only after about 2 minutes. I can't boot into Safe Mode, same result (blue screen), I have tried a repair install, (same results). I have swapped out video cards and RAM, and I have also disconnected any thing unnessessary(modem, NIC, etc) and cannot get this computer to boot past the welcome screen.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks

I have even followed the instructions from Microsoft to clear the memory incase it is stuck in hybernation mode!!! NO HELP

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A short, practical diagnostic addendum to the thread (notes tied to , and ):

Symptoms like a blank/solid-blue desktop with a movable cursor and “Task Manager disabled” usually mean the interactive shell never starts or is actively blocked (malware, altered Winlogon values, or a corrupt user profile). Slow CPUs can make timeouts look like hangs, as suggested, and as pointed out an active infection can persist through a Repair install.

Useful troubleshooting workflow (before full reinstall)

  • Boot options: use F8 → Enable Boot Logging. The file C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt lists drivers that did/didn’t load; look for obvious failures.
  • Try Safe Mode with Command Prompt (F8). If a command shell appears, run sfc /scannow (XP will ask for the CD) and inspect Event Viewer logs from there.
  • If normal UI never appears, investigate the shell/userinit values offline (see below) rather than assuming a driver-only problem. Booting to a Linux live USB or a WinPE stick is a safe way to access the filesystem without risking the infected OS.

Checking/fixing Winlogon offline (safe when the machine won’t produce a desktop)

  • From another Windows machine attach or mount the problem disk, run regedit, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → File → Load Hive, open the mounted disk’s Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE hive and give it a temp name.
  • Inspect the Winlogon keys and correct them if altered:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
  Shell    = "explorer.exe"
  Userinit = "C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,"

Unload the hive when finished.

If infection or rootkit is suspected, create an image of the drive and scan that image from a known-clean system with updated scanners or use a reputable boot-rescue ISO. If a reinstall is chosen (as ultimately did), scan backed-up files on a different, patched machine before restoring. Also check the disk’s SMART status—repeated corruption can mimic software failures.

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Member Avatar for HoustonIT

Sounds like Windows is trying to load up an app or service that is hanging. With that slow of a CPU and that much RAM you might have to give it a while to give up trying to start the faulty process. I would try it again in safe mode but wait 10-15 minutes.

Member Avatar for gerbil

Urk. Some malware disable Task Manager, some disable Safe Mode. Your symptom suggests that some drivers are not loading successfully [they continue to load and initialise in the background while the logon screen is up].I see that you have tried a Windows Repair [not Recovery Console] with no success, so it may be time to slave the drive, copy out the wanted files to a DVD or any other drive, delete them on the bad drive and then run chkdsk /p [and chkdsk /r if required] on it. Format the partition and reinstall.
If you have space on the drive you could create a new partition and install into that. Then copy out files and run chkdsk on the old OS's partition.
Just for such a thing I usually leave five or ten GB unallocated on a drive. But I don't do movie stuff with my sys so I have space to burn.

Member Avatar for slash49er

Well when all else failed I had to back up all the data by putting the HD as a slave in my other pc. After that a complete format and re-install did the trick and the pc is back to normal. Never did find the root cause but I suspect it was a virus since my anti-virus went crazy after I slaved the HD into my other pc. Thanks for all the suggestions !!!

Member Avatar for gerbil

Good-oh. I didn't see any other way of recovering from that one. A Repair will not remove any malware that is active, so you just get back into the same leaky boat. A format and fresh installation loses their files.
Get a decent AV... Avast is pretty good [I switched from AVG because I did not like the slowness of the new AVG8, plus when I modified its check mode settings it changed its tray icon to a fault icon, so I could not tell if it was reporting my changes or some new problem without opening up the interface. Silly of em.

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