Hey Rock. thanks for the suggestions.

Question. If I install the drive in another machine, I boot from a local
disk. How do I edit the registry on this "foreign" disk? It is not "other"
user since the user is not local to this other machine...



"Rock" wrote:

> "Nate" <Nate@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:4630B7EF-1DD9-4727-B991-70C17F06D383@microsoft.com...
> > Hi all
> >
> > I am dealing with a real headscratcher. A client gave me their computer
> > because they could not log on. They put their login info:
> > username/password,
> > it looked like it was doing some machination then went back to the login
> > prompt.
> >
> > Hmm. I tried logging in with the Admin account (which apparently had no
> > password), and same thing. I then booted to safe mode, but still no luck.
> > I
> > could not get past the login prompt.
> >
> > I took out the disk and put it in another machine and was able to see all
> > the appropriate files are there. Ran antivirus scans/etc, cleaned
> > everything
> > out, but still not luck.
> >
> > I even tried to do a boot from CD/Repair, but the start said it could not
> > find a disk. Strange because it is a SATA disk and is recognized at boot.
> > The
> > OS does boot to the login prompt.
>
>
> Install the drive in another machine and edit the registry remotely to see
> what the userinit value is. See these articles.
>
> Editing the Registry for "other" Users
> http://www.dougknox.com/
>
> You cannot log on to Windows XP after you remove Wsaupdater.exe
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892893/en-us
>
> If that doesn’t help see this:
> A User Logon Request Is Rejected Without Any Messages
> http://support.microsoft.com/?id=313322
>
> --
> Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]
>
>