Blank blue screen after sign on screen

Alright, I am at a loss.
Here is the issue:
(Windows XP)
Turn on 'puter
Watch Windows page load (stare at blue scroll do its thing).
Select appropiate user and enter respective password.
Then there is nothing but a blank blue screen. No restart, no error messages, nada.
I can ctrl-alt-del then select New Item. Then I can browse through my drives, etc.
I was able to run a malware cleaner and got rid of a bunch of junk. That did not help.
I have started in Safe mode also - no difference except the screen is blank and it has safe mode written in the corners.
I have started with "restore to last known..." - still nothing.
Any suggestions? Thanks,
Len Q

If I was at work and you called me with this problem the first thing I would be thinking is something in the startup. I would try and get at it with hijackthis or autoruns just to see if there is something that shouldnt be launching or something that is starting and failing.

if you do a ctrl-alt-del can you open taskmanager (taskmgr) and try newtaskrun> www.google.com?

Yes. I can run the task manager and run new tasks. But i did try to run internet explorer and it would not connect to the internet. But i only did it once. i can try it again tomorrow. I am not at that computer at the present.

reboot it, take it out of savemode, reboot and see if you can online. getting some tools on it would be helpful.

Do you have a homeland security build? Seriously.

Not sure about the homeland security build. but i doubt it. according to the owner, it has been working fine until this week.
I will run hijack this on it and see what i find. i will keep you posted.
Len Q

Try running 'explorer.exe'. [without the ''s of course] See if that will give you anything. If you ran malware scans, and cleared off a whole bunch of junk, and are still having problems like this, I would look into reinstalling the OS. I would assume there is still some crud buried in there somewhere. You can try to burrow it out, but you are very likely going to break things in the process, and may never actually have a clean system.

I know it is a pain, but you may want to start looking for those install disks.

Just my two cents. :)

Hi,


Before you do anything too drastic, have you tried all the user accounts?

Quote:

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Select appropiate user and enter respective password.
Then there is nothing but a blank blue screen. No restart, no error messages, nada.

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That could be a corrupted user profile, such that it cannot find the desktop to load?

I assume that you have checked the system logs and found nothing? Windows is not terribly good at reporting user profile errors.:(

Have you tried the administrator account?

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm

Nihil,
Yep - even tried the admin acct. still nothing

Westin,
explorer.exe does nothing when i try it. unfortunately, we cannot find the install disk.
You think I could burn a recovery disk at home and use it? Hmmm....

Come to think of it, let me add another piece of info to the pie. Upon start up, there pops up a window that says that Windows is not genuine. It gives two buttons - "Genuine" and "Resolve later". Owner says it has been doing that since she bought it. I will need to get some more info on this one.

Is there a license sticker on the machine??

You cant use a recovery disk made one one machine... on another machine....but you maybe able to use the recovery console and repair the registry. You need an XP install disk to do this.

MLF