re: Strange XP Boot/Start up Problem
Friday, January 6, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Steve Dunn
(911 messages posted)
Bit confused - you say you 'installed XP Home again' - but rest of description refutes
that (ie, you don't say, I then wiped the drive and reinstalled XP).
That's what I would suggest you do - boot from XP install CD - choose install new,
it should offer to repair existing - press Esc to not do this, then at the partition
screen use the delete option to remove existing partition. Then create new one and
away you go.
Could speculate on what's caused your problem - but as its so early in the getting
going process, starting again best IMO. The logon screen you're getting is just an
option - something's set flag to make it happen. You can only log on to Administrator
account in Safe Mode with XP Home (need Pro to get round this) - but as I said. clean
install. Its odd that Asus's utility should cause this - so I'd be a bit suspicious
of your hardware (ie, after new install, keep an eye out for odd things happening,
in case its not the Asus utility, but hardware problem).
On Friday, January 6, 2006 at 4:28 pm, Downunda wrote:
>Please bear with me as this is rather long as I wanted to provide a complete picture
>of the situation.
>
>Let’s take my story from here…. as a last resort to try and overcome my problem
I
>reinstalled XP home again (how I came to this is detailed below). However now when
>the system starts up it presents me with a log-on window, instead of the normal
large
>user name Icon one should see.
>The log on window has User Name and Password fields, the User Name field has Administrator
>already entered in it and if I enter the admin password I get the error message
“unable
>to log on because of an account restriction”. If I replace the user name with my
>normal account name and enter my normal account password I get passed into XP as
>I should and everything is normal.
>
>Also when shutting down, instead of getting presented with the usual large icons
>labeled shut down, log, off, and restart, I get a window with a drop down list of
>selections which are the same shut down, log, off, and restart options. This is
really
>weird!!!
>
>If I start the system in Safe Mode all is ok there and I can log on as administrator,
>so the Admin account looks OK.
>
>I figured that what is happening is that somehow on boot XP is confused between
safe
>and normal mode, hence the unusual log on window.
>
>Help, all suggestions welcome.
>
>How Did This All Start?
>Only last week I had just built up a new PC from components along with a new version
>of XP home that I also purchased. The PC came together ok and the installation of
>XP Home went flawlessly. Over the next few days I loaded any required drivers and
>my various applications.
>
>Everything was working well until I decided to load Smart Doctor which is an ASUS
>display management utility that came with my ASUS PCIe card (I did this just to
see
>what features it provided).
>After I loaded the utility it didn’t seem to offer a lot but I did get a message
>when I clicked one of the icons that I should load another supplied add-on utility
>if I wanted to use all of the utility’s available functions. I decided that I wouldn’t
>use this utility after all so didn’t bother to load the other add-on.
>
>However, shortly after loading the display utility I rebooted the system and the
>system hung with a beep a short time after the windows into screen was displayed.
>I tried multiple reboots to no avail, same problem. So I rebooted into Safe Mode
>and took the option to restore to the last known good configuration. The system
came
>up OK but surprisingly the Smart Doctor utility was still there. I expected to see
>the configuration that existed before Smart Doctor had been loaded.
>
>So I uninstalled Smart Doctor and got my original problem back as when I rebooted
>the system it still continued to hang with a beep a short time after the windows
>into screen was displayed. Again I tried multiple reboots to no avail.
>
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