Windows 2000 Won't Stay Logged In

Dexter

The eldery neighbours next door, knowing that I am a computer kind of guy, asked me if I would upgrade their Windows 98 computer to Windows 2000. (Older computer, AMD K-6 @ 450 Mhz, but it woks great for them, they only surf the wbe, do some e-mail, and play cards online.) Being the nice guy that I am (and since they loan us all kinds of tools and yard care implements all the time ) I said sure, no problem.

Now I have done Win98 to Win2000 upgrades a few times before, so I wasn't anticipating any problems (ha!)

Ran the install, no problems. Rebooted, loaded up, got to logon screen. They requested no password, so I logged in as Administrator with no password. W2K loaded into the Administrator profile, displayed the dsektop background that was on the system before, paused for a moment (no desktop icons, start menu, taskbar, etc), then immediately popped back out to the logon screen. Successive attempts to log on also have the same result.

I tried running a repair install from the W2K CD, but it had the same problem. Safe Mode does not work any better either.

Any suggestions welcome...

Dexter...

GnomeWizardd

format c:/

primesuspect

I agree. There are so many weirdnesses associated with upgrades from one kernel to another. I have had so many problems with upgrades in the past that a full reinstall is the only way to go in my book.

Al_Capown

I'm guessing that system has 64 mb of system memory right?

Dexter

I am not at the system right now (I'm at work), but I believe it has 96 MB, which should be enough...I run W2K on my older box at home with 96 MB...a bit slowly, true, but it runs.

I have a sneaking suspicion as to what the issue may be. He is running a program that provides a new desktop background and screensaver via the internet every day. I am guessing that this program is not W2K compatible, and should have been uninstalled prior to the upgrade. I think what is happening is that the desktop image loads, tries to run the program to log in to the server and update itself, and somehow the program fails. I tried unplugging the NIC from the router to see if it would just time out, but still no dice.

This is just a guess, the only way to verify it would be to uninstall that prog...which I can't do because I can't get into the damn thing.

Format c:\ is looking like an unsavoury but viable option. They don't have a lot of data on there, I don't think, but still...grrrr, I hate formatting someone else's computer :shakehead: I should have transferred data to my computer via the network first.... :banghead:

Before that though, I am going to try bringin home a spare HD from work, running the W2K install on it, then seeing if I can access the data on their drive and copy across, then maybe do a Drive Image copy back over to their drive. Lots of work...that's what I get for doing favours, huh?

Dexter...

Dexter

Well, I solved the problem on my own....(as usual.) In fact, I am posting this from that computer....

I installed a fresh copy of Windows 2000 to the same parition. This gave me 2 choices at the next login, both Windows 2000 Professional. One of them still stalled, but the other worked fine, and I had access to all documents. I deleted the bad boot one from the boot.ini.

None of the programs transferred across on this install, because it did not get treated as an upgrade, but programs can always be reinstalled. At least I did not lose any of their data.

So, just have a little Windows updating and driver installing to do, and they will be good to go.

Oh, Al, it actually has 128 MB RAM, surprisingly enough.

Dexter...