Inanis.net

Another fix I found last week – a tip really. If you have a Windows XP machine that, when you try to log on to any account in both normal and safe mode, immediatly logs off before giving you a desktop or icons, usually with the phrase “saving your settings” just before going back to the login screen, I have found the general cause of the problem is a broken User Init process.

I have found that in most cases either userinit.exe is missing/broken/corrupt or the registry is pointing to something other than userinit.exe and -that- file is missing/broken/corrupt.

To check, get access to the hard drive of the broken computer in “offiline mode” (i.e. remove it and attach it to another computer) and check inside the x:\windows\system32 folder (whatever drive letter and windows folder this particular drive is using) and make sure userinit.exe is there. If it is there, compare it aganst the copy on a working computer. If they don’t match, backup the one on the broken hard drive and copy the good one from the working computer to the broken one.

After that, try the registry. Load the “SOFTWARE” hive from the broken hard drive (x:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE) into regedit on the working computer and browse to LOADEDHIVE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ and make sure the userinit value on the right points to the proper path and filename for where userinit.exe is residing on the broken machine with a COMMA after the pathname (usually “C:\windows\system32\userinit.exe,”)

Unload the hive, disconnect the hard drive, reattach to “broken” computer and see what happens.