Log on screen has no icons to click on...

[MachineGunKelly]

Ok, I screwed up trying to set up a network. I set the logon to enable any user to have access in the home network I'm trying to set up (The computers weren't seeing each other and kept telling me I didn't have 'rights' to view the other...). After getting the client computer to 'see' the host, I figured I was good and shut the client rig down to work on my taxes on the main (host) rig figuring it was going to take me all night like it usually does and I'd finalize sharing and all tommorrow.

Well, later I needed to collect some files from the client rig and turned her on as I couldn't see the files I needed from the host with it off. Up comes the XP logon screen saying to click on the user icon and off we would go but NO ICONS were on the screen...I rebooted, booted again, tried booting from the XP cd in the cd rom, same thing. Made a bootable floppy from the host rig, also running XP, and booted from that on the non-compliant client rig. Now I have a command promt of C:\windows that will not let me run %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe to restore the registry saying it's a bad command name.

How can I get back into windows to fix the logon problem guys? Maybe I've been at the taxes too long today but I'm stuck and can't even figure out how to go about re-formatting C if I can't gain access to a regular C:\ prompt. :eek3: :rant:

Thanks, MGK

[Black Hawk]

Try a repair installation.

[MachineGunKelly]

Yo buddy! The problem is I can't get past the logon screen. Can boot from cd but can't get any farther than normal HD bootup.

[LawnMM]

Tried safe mode?

[Black Hawk]

Yo buddy! The problem is I can't get past the logon screen. Can boot from cd but can't get any farther than normal HD bootup.
You don't need to logon for a repair installation. You boot with the cd like you were gonna install XP but at one point it searches for installed OS, and it'll ask if you want to repair it.

[DanG]

Try hitting ctrl-alt-del 3 times when you get to the login screen. That should bring up the old style login.

[Dexter]

MGK:

like DanG just said, try hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL a couple of times when the login screen does show up. That should pop up the dialog box style login. Enter a username and password. Then go to the Control Panel and choose User Accounts. Click on "Change the way users log on or off."

If the "Use Welcome Screen" is not turned on, activate it and reboot.

If it is checked, turn it off then back on to see what happens. Reboot.

If neither of those work, try running a system restore,

If you could not get past the first step....we'll all keep thinking.... ;)

Dexter...

[MachineGunKelly]

Yep. Tried the boot from cd deal and got the same result, a blank logon screen. Fiddled around with everything I could think of, repair, restore, safe mode, command prompt, nothing worked. Finally got tired of screwing around with it and wiped C: drive clean with a 98 boot disk to start over. I should've done that b4 loading XP over the old 98 anyway. I know, I know, don't do upgrades but I didn't know that till AFTER I bought the upgrade. :)

Thanks for all the tips and help fellas, I'll keep them handy for future use!

MGK

[Dexter]

MGK,

sorry you couldn't get it without wiping the drive clean. Hope you didn't lose anything important :(

/me thinks about buying more CD-RW's for backups.....

[MachineGunKelly]

I had to kill it. It gave me a nosebleed trying to fix it!

Now I KNOW I'm good to go. It had been just about a year for the 98 install anyway, you know, kinda like a car battery lasting just long enough to outlive the warranty? ;)

[Straight_Man]

For next time, with 98, you need to use no system variables but rather a literal DOS style path-- second, a 98 startup disk will NOT read NTFS, and the boot volume or partition for XP SHOULD be NTFS type. For an XP floppy startup boot set, you need to use literal file system path if you cannot login in recovery console, as the bringup of registry literally can define the path vars you ware trying to use in XP. No login, no bringup of reg or path vars defined in it.

I would have reloaded the thing also.

John.

[MachineGunKelly]

John: I would have reloaded the thing also.

Heh, heh. And I had a HELLUVA time trying to do that. XP quit in the middle of the load and left me hangin' with a corrupted registry. THAT was fun to recover from...
So, wipe, fdisk, format, 98, XP, and screw the network! :bigggrin:

[Straight_Man]

Um, partition magic, wipe the parts completely or convert all to FAT32 and then do the FDISK part following this,-- or FDISK wipe the non DOS parts(ALL of them, you are wiping the boot and part table in MBR), reboot, define parts--, reboot from floppy, load 98, then load XP. A Full XP CD reload would have been easier and faster.

ADDED:

OR, get a Ranish PM, add Ranish executable to a Windows 98 Startup disk, use Ranish to wipe the parts (ALL of them), and continue with the FDISK poart or use Ranish to build a Fat32 tareget partition. Google Ranish, please, the host sites are OpenSource and who hosts has varied over years Ranish has been out. I recommend Ranish knowledg and acquisition for a free PM that can wipe almost anything, and can create and format parts on the fly that the ME and back install can use. Technically, you can wipe HD from a Linux Live CD also.

Essentially you need to zero MBR and MBT to null, then rebuild a part structure, then reload, or alternatively zero-pack the HD which is what I do if I think there might even be a Boot Sector virus on box. Zero packing takes forever, Ranish is hypertiny and hyperfast. But a zero pack will wipe MBT and MBR and leave you with a virgin HD if you write protect the mfr HD Util floppy and then run a diag to make sure the zero-pack took and the HD is good as far as media goes.

John.

[MachineGunKelly]

I appreciate all the info, tho most of it went right by me bro!

To explain, I tried to do a full XP reload but for some wierd reason it wouldn't 'take'. All the rig would actually LET me do was boot from the 98 floppy and fdisk the C: drive.
So that's all I COULD do with the options I had available to me (not knowing about the special commands for fixing XP's registry). What I essentially had was a fresh copy of XP that wouldn't let me in, on top of a old screwed-up copy of 98 2nd that had some stability issues, which led to a big mess!

All's good now. Freshly formatted and running smooth.