XP pro start-up Problem...

[woodstook]

Hi, guys,

Today I have trouble with starting up my PC which is very frustrating.

Here is the situation. Last night everything was fine and I remembered I logged out successfully. Today when I tried to log in my account in my PC, I found sth strange happened.

I heard the sound of start-up welcome which was normal, but then the start-up seemed to be stuck, since the task bar which located at the bottom of the screen was totally blank and kept blank.

After waiting for five to ten minutes, I decided to take action to check it out. I pressed Alt+Ctrl+Del which brought up the task manager window. I was aware that the CPU usage was 100%. I also checked the processes tab in the window, and found out that there was a process called explorer.exe took 99% CPU usage. and the number of processes in the window was about 30 which was far less than the usual number (about 60).

Since the system was stuck I can do nothing but logged out. There are two accounts in my PC, I only use one of them. So then I just want to give it a shot to try another account which I seldom used before (only once or twice I think). This time the system started up successfully and smoothly.

So obviously there must be sth wrong with the account I usually use. I'd like to fix it by restoring the system. Unfortunately when I rebooted it in safe mode, same problem persisted. And when I logged in admin account, there was no restore point newer than today. So I didn't restore the system.

Can anyone help me please?
BTW, some info of my PC XP pro, 1.23G RAM.

best regards,

woodstook

[jholland1964]

One thing you could try from the account which will boot is to Start > Run > msconfig

On the general tab, click the 'Selective Startup' radial, then uncheck the 'Load Startup items'. If you then go to the Startup tab, you will see all your startup items have been unchecked. Once you click OK, you can restart your PC which will restart without all your startup programs. If your CPU remains normal, you will then need to select each startup program one-by-one until such time that you find the culprit.

When you restart, you will get a warning that you are in selective startup mode - this is to be expected. If you ever get to a point that you are happy, you can check the box to tell Windows not to warn you again.

[woodstook]

Thanks for your advice.

First, I did as you said to uncheck the 'Load Startup items' on the general tab of System Configuration Utility and restart. But when I logged in the account I usually used, it still got stuck and when I checked out the task manager, I found same thing happened, i.e. explorer.exe took 99% CPU usage.

Then I tried to uncheck not only 'Load Startup items' but also 'Load System Service' and restarted it. No good. Same problem.

Finally I tried to use Diagnostic Startup, but still got same result.

What else can I do? It's realy weird, because another account works fine.

Please help ...

[jholland1964]

Sounds as if YOUR account is corrupt or at least a file is corrupt.
Can you run checkdisk do you think?

[woodstook]

Yes, I have run checkdisk and nothing bad was reported.

If the account is corrupt, does that mean the only thing I can do is to delete the account and set up a new account?

Anyway, I appreciate your advice.

[cauzomb]

There is a chance that something is being activated durring the logon of the account like a virus, or malware that isn't loading with the other account. This could be the case if the accounts are set to not share the settings/desktop/files etc.. Have a look at the sticky in the spyware help section here

Might be worth a shot to see if the system is clean.

[woodstook]

Thanks for your advice.

I did the same thing as the sticky told me. And the Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and the ESET Online Scanner did find something and reported them.

Then I tried to log in the account didn't work previously. This it seemed fine except that I was told before login precess started that the profile of the account seemed corrupt or removed and the account would be started by a tempory profile. But anyway right now the account worked again.

Thanks again and I attached the scanlogs, could you please take a look of them for me?

I really really appreciate the help I get here.

[Erica Shell]

The next time you get back in can you take a look in device manager (Control Panel>System>Hardware) and check for any hardware that is not configured correctly (yellow exclamation mark next to item).

<LINKS REMOVED BY ADMIN>

[woodstook]

I've checked the device manager, there was no hardware marked with a yellow exclamation mark.

This time when I logged in the account I use previously, everything looked OK, the wallpaper and other settings were just as the way I set up before. But I noticed one thing weird which I didn't take serious before. Several minutes after I logged in, one window would be popped up saying that explorer.exe would be closed abnormaly and asking me if I want to send a report to Microsoft. I usually clicked NO and then the task bar at the bottom would disappear for a few seconds and showed up again. But when I am using the other account, such kind of thing never happened to me.

Is there any explanation to this situation?

[jholland1964]

I've checked the device manager, there was no hardware marked with a yellow exclamation mark.

This time when I logged in the account I use previously, everything looked OK, the wallpaper and other settings were just as the way I set up before. But I noticed one thing weird which I didn't take serious before. Several minutes after I logged in, one window would be popped up saying that explorer.exe would be closed abnormaly and asking me if I want to send a report to Microsoft. I usually clicked NO and then the task bar at the bottom would disappear for a few seconds and showed up again. But when I am using the other account, such kind of thing never happened to me.

Is there any explanation to this situation?

Is Norton Clean Sweep part of your Norton Program? This has been known to cause that error.
One thing of note in your logs is that your Java program is out of date.
Please go here and download the newest version 6 update 5.
Please choose the Offline Installation and save it to your deskto.
Once the download is complete please close all browsers, go offline.
Go to Add/Remove and Uninstall all the old Java entries.
Once you have uninstalled them then install the newest version. Once the install is complete, and it may require a reboot, then go back online and go here to verify the installation.

After that run a new HJT scan and post back with that log.