Hi everyone,
I think I have the sale problem and your solution of booting in recovery console and replace the userinit.exe file will answer my problem.
But I have another problem : when I boot with the recovery consol option, it promps for wich installation, so I put 1 (for c:\windows) and then it promps for the administrator password and the fact is that I don't have administrator password so I type nothing. But I says invalid password.
What must I do ?
please help me !!
thanks a lot

Use this first to reset/change your password on the Administrator account

I have tried every single piece of advice you people had to offer and nothing works ive tried replacing the file, ive tried enabling that netlogon listsvc and still nothing, ive tried rebooting a thousand times to see if it was just being stupid and still nothing I cannot login to windows xp just like everyone else it says loading personal settings then it flashes to what seems like the desktop then it says logging off saving your personal settings. if anyone has any other way that doesnt involve me having to erase everything and re install windows PLEASE let me know
 
btw: i just got my computer fixed the day before this started happenin and they installed windows and service pack 2 does this have anything to do with anything and is it just me who has been having bad luck with this bullshit service pack 2?? thank you

I had a similar problem on Win2K Server. The solution was a variant of the userinit.exe posted above. I had just run Adaware and got the same behavior where I was in a login loop.
 
Note, I had access to the registry and file system on the broken machine through my network which made it easy to diagnose and fix.
 
The following Registry entry:
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/Current Version/Winlogon/Userinit
 
contained a string that was pointing to a bogus copy of Userinit located in "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Windows..."
 
I changed the registry setting to point at the real userinit.exe in c:\winnt\system32 and rebooted for success.
 
Note that the file copy solution noted above didn't work because Winlogon was looking elsewhere for the userinit.exe file.
 
I don't claim any credit for the fix, it is posted on the lavasoft web site. It's a known problem with Adaware, so lots of people are going to suffer from it.
 
Good luck to all -- thornfish

My XP is on NTFS. What boot utility will allow access to my C drive? I have same problem like the others here.
 
Thanks
 
Originally posted by peterh:

Quote:The recovery console is available from booting from a retail or OEM version of Windows XP (Restore discs don`t count). 
You can install the Recovery console by running from the XP CD:
d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons
 
If you have a FAT32 volume, any normal DOS or Win98 boot disk will do.
If you have NTFS then you need to boot from a utility to give you r/w access to your C: drive.
 
To replace userinit.exe:
1. Boot using Recovery console (or other cmd prompt with access to C: drive)
2. CD Windows\System32
3. Expand d:\i386\userinit.ex_ userinit.exe (or Copy d:\i386\userinit.ex_ userinit.exe) where d: is CDROM drive and need to expand compressed file to full file.
4. type Exit to reboot
 

 

I can't give it the administrative password in repair at the repair console, so I don't understand what you all are saying to do.
 
Please help the dumdum.

The problem for me with Win2k was that there was a problem with Userinit.exe not working/there. hence, the reason why I kept getting the logon loop.
 
booted into the recovery console, took my other Win2k machine and copied the userinit.exe onto a floppy, and then used "copy A:\userinit.exe C:\winnt\system32/userinit.exe" to put that file in its place. I did have some corruption with Windows after, so I ran a repair of Windows, and that was it, Win2k Booted.
 
Credit for the solution goes to the combined efforts of:
 
jonno001
 
metafizx
 
Thanks guys!!!!