Hi All
Help---Damsel in distress--I am tearing my hair out in frustration!
I would appreciate all the help you can offer as I am so tired of starting this computer in Safe Mode
I am running Windows XP Home edition, Pentium 4 , 2 GB Ram (74% free).
Of late when I boot the computer it goes through all the correct motions. I get to the Welcome screen, click on my name, it tells me that it is loading my personal settings,---the screen saver appears and nothing else. Windows appears not to load as the desktop is blank save for the screen saver.
If I go into Safe Mode with Networking, I can access everything okay.
Tonight I downloaded Spybot and tried to install and the message was that it cannot load onto a Server (!) I have no idea why I am now on a Server.
The message when trying to install read:
HKey_Current_User\software\microsoft\windows\curre nt version\Run
Regset value EX FAILED Code 5. Access is denied.
This computer came preloaded with XP Home so I cannot do a repair install unfortunately.
I would appreciate your advise please. Thanks

If a repair installation is your choice of route, you should have a recovery partition, and also should have a recovery CD (though one of my Dells did not but I got ahold of a couple free from Dell).

Many thanks for your reply.
I do have a Recovery CD from Sony. However, if I use this, I revert the computer back to the original settings and lose my data.
I tried the following and it seems to be better now.---I used a registry recovery backup from before this problem started. Windows is loading now when I boot--hopefully it will remain booting successfully
Thanks again

That's great to hear! Make sure you are doing everything in the Afterwork to prevent many potential future issues:
http://www.pchelpforum.com/hijackthi...afterwork.html

Also, I've marked this thread as Pending, so let us hear in a few days how this problem's getting along. If your computer is still functioning properly after a few days, post back and I'll mark it as Resolved.