Most likely a regedit "FUBAR" or virus.

Hi!
I have a strange problem. Yesterday my PC (WIN NT 2000 Pro) was fine.
Today, after password is prompted and inserted:
The computer starts to login, loads the background picture for a second and jumps back out to the login window again.
It might be a virus in that case most likely to have gone active trough mpg files, since that was the last thing I did before shutdown.
But it can also be because of a line in the register that I deleted.
I was getting rid of an annoying popup at login, it asked to add (my old anti-virus file) PAV.reg to the registry every time at startup.
After I deleted just that part of "a" line in regedit, and rebooted, it asked to add the next object in the line. So I deleted em all...
The line was something like:
userinit "regedit C:\...\PAV.reg; C:\...\userinit.exe; ...
Do you know anything about it and or how to restore or fix my problem?

Hey there ETM and welcome to PCHF

I presume you didn't make any backups before you deleted those entries?
:o

I does sound like a registry problem so lets look into that first.

• Can you try booting into safemode and let us know if you can login properly
• Try login with the Administrator account (if you have a seperate one) or any other account and see if it works. (in normal mode)

No I already tried that...
Try in safemode gave nada response...just longer waitingtime until the loginwindow came back.
The Adminaccount did the same thing...but atleast the it shows that the passwords are still correct so theres no hacking involved.
I didn't think it would do any harm to delete the whole line since the first one worked ok...but that might be the problem somehow.

Can I edit the registry someway or make a rollback or something?
What sort of bootdisks etc should I use if so?

BTW
How do you make a small and easy backup of your system in Win2000?
How do you backup your register and what files are there, do I have a computermade backup on the system already?
I've seen that on some windowssystems the reg-files are system.dat and user.dat...but haven't been able to locate any on that computer yet. (I'm using my old 200MMX Win98 right now)

1. You can use the windows backup utility to do this however you would need to be in Windows to do this. You could also use a program like norton ghost and ghost the image of your hard drive onto another drive.
2. This can be done through regedit (you need to be in windows again for this) there is an export section in the file menu. Remember to enable the button that says 'ALL' in the export range.
3. These files are normally hidden in the windows folder, you would need to unhide them using the attrib command. The only problem is those registry files are already corrupt unless you can see any backup versions e.g system.bak. Checkout this website - http://www.computerhope.com/registry.htm

All the above stuff was just to answer some of your questions, it probably won't help in this case because you can't get into windows.
I think the best solution for you would be to boot off your windows 2000 CD and perform a repair install.
This won't delete any files it will simply fix any problems in the windows system/registry.

I think I already tried a repair install from my FactoryInstallation CD. Not sure what it did or if that is the same as from a regular Win2000CD...but it didn't do any difference.
I will try to make a repair from a regular CD tomorrow or when I find the time.
I think I found a system.bak file though when I booted from the CD and checked the system to "repair it manually" or something.
But that file was so much smaller that the reg-file should be.
(I don't remember what files where on with Comp, I used this 200MMX to compare)
Can I use the system.bak if I have one for something?

If you ghost an image or make a Winbased backup, how much space does it take and how much does it backup...what kind/type of files?
Does the image make a complete image of everything?

If the file is smaller than your current system.dat file then I don't recommend using it. It must be an old backup of the file so it could cause problems.

If you are feeling brave you could try making a copy of both files, then rename system.bak to system.dat and see if you can boot. If it fails then copy the old system.dat back over it.

If you Ghost a hard drive it creates an exact disk image onto another drive. This means you could connect that second drive as master and literally boot up with it. (if the windows worked of course)
More info:

• http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoff...r&pvid=ghost10
• http://www.bay-wolf.com/ghostclone.htm

A win-based backup is different, you choose which files/folders you would like to backup and tell the program where you want to back them up to (floppy, hard drive e.t.c)
It creates a file with an extension of .bkf
More info here:

• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._03july14.mspx