Auto disconnect from User Profile

[coventslick]

I am running XP Home on a AMD Athlon XP (TM) 2200+ with Quantispeed Technology (ASUS Technology Motherboard 256Mb PC2700 DDR Memory (333MHz), 80Gb Ultra Fast with 2Mb Buffer (7200rpm) 128Mb ATI Radeon 9000 + TV Out + DVI

The computer is set up with 3 user profiles, 1 for me (the admin) and 2 other guests. Mysteriously, whenever I attempt to log on to my user (after typing in my password) it automatically goes through the log off process. Therefore I basically cant get into my computer (nor can the guests).

How on earth can I bypass this?

Thanks

Nick

[Miz]

Start the computer in Safe Mode (repeatedly press the F8 key during the boot process which will take you to a boot menu where you choose Safe Mode) and choose the Administrator account to logon to. If you've never created a password for that main Administrator account (which in XP Home is hidden except in Safe Mode), after clicking on it to select it, press the Enter key.

Once in Safe Mode in the Administrator account, create a new user profile in Control Panel>User Accounts. giving it administrator privileges. Then reboot the computer into the new profile you just created.

If that works, the MS KB article How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile has the instructions to get the new user account exactly the same as the old one which probably, as the title of the article implies, got corrupted in some manner.

Just leave the old profile in place until you're sure you have everything you need from it (a week or two is usually enough).

[coventslick]

Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply. When I open in Safe Mode, I am presented with a new account (Administrator) and my old one (which still requires a password). When I click on "Administrator", it commences loading, but then logs out again almost straight away ("saving yuor settings....") without letting me access the desktop. Needlesstosay, the old User Account does the same thing. Yowza... Any other suggestions?
Best regards
Nick

[Miz]

I can only tell you what I'd try next.

I'd boot the computer with the XP CD in the CD drive. If it doesn't boot to the CD, go into the BIOS to set the CD drive first in the boot order. The key to press to get into the BIOS can vary but if you ever see a screen early on during boot that says anything about pressing some key to enter setup, press that key when that message appears.

Once it's booted to the CD, I'd choose the option to repair, which will eventually (after the usual spinning and whirring) get you to a DOS-looking screen.

Then I'd type "chkdsk /r" (without the quotes) and press the Enter key.

It's a scanning and repair process that can take a while (20 minutes on the last machine I used it on, a 1.4 ghtz, 512 RAM, 7200 RPM 20 gig drive) so be patient.

When it's finished, see if it will boot normally into Windows.

[coventslick]

Thanks Miz

The disk boots up ok, but at there stage where I type in the checkdisk code, the system requests the Administrator password. As you can guess, I wouldnt be posting if it accepted the User Profile password that I usually type in on the Welcome page!

So, how do I disable the Admin password (thereby hopefully overcoming this further obsticle) - or is there something else I can type in.

Thanks again for your assistance....

Nick