I am helping a friend with an old Packard Bell system that was upgraded from Win98 to XP (Home edition). Suddenly when startup runs it immediately goes to shutdown and then requests the username/password again. I thought to fix this using the utilities on a CD I downloaded from 'eddie maintenance'' but when the CD is booted the utility will execute but I'm unable to enter anything on the keyboard. I hope someone can help as I'm trying to avoid reformatting the HD and reinstalling everything.

Thanks to all.

Did the problem start as soon as the upgrade was done? If so you probably will have to reinstall XP as something has gone wrong and you don't have a clean system state to revert to. Otherwise what did your friend do just prior to this problem occuring.

Did they install any new drivers, software, run a registry cleaner, etc.

She said that immediately before the problem occurred that she ran Spy-Bot. When that finished she attempted the reboot and the rest is history.

The pc has a corrupt registry. Are you able to start the pc in safe mode? If so spybot with you can then restore backup that spybot made. To start in Safe Mode, boot the pc and repeatedly hit the the F8 key. Select Safe Mode. You can also try Last Known Good first then Safe Mode if that doesn't work.

Please post back if Safe Mode doesn't work.

I'm unable to boot in safe mode. Hitting F8 doesn't bring up the selection. I tried to use one of the old Win98 floppies to boot and it gave me a choice for safe mode but the keyboard was inoperable so I couldn't choose that for a startup method.

If you have the Windows CD and Product key you can try doing a repair install. Set first boot device in BIOS to CD drive. Then do the following:

1. When the Press any key to boot from CD message is displayed on your screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD.
2. Press ENTER when you see the message To setup Windows XP now, and then press ENTER displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen.
3. Do not choose the option to press R to use the Recovery Console.
4. In the Windows XP Licensing Agreement, press F8 to agree to the license agreement.
5. Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press R to repair Windows XP.
6. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete Setup.

It sounds like a good plan. It may take until this weekend to get over there to try it. I will let you know the outcome and thanks for the assistance.