Anyway, 2 days ago I cleaned his computer using one of the various spyware type programs that I have been using for years on the same computer. I use several and don't know if it was Lavasoft's Ad-aware that caused it or Spyware Sweeper. If they even caused it at all. But, it was the only thing that had been done to the computer in weeks (no one has even used it in about a month since we have another desktop and laptop).
So, I clean the computer and restart it like I usually do when I'm done running those programs only this time, I see the wallpaper for a few seconds after it restarts, then it goes back to the blue welcome screen and then shows me the user log in icon (which happens to be my son's name). Anyway, I click on his name/icon and then I see the wallpaper flash for a second and then it shows the blue welcome screen again and it says something like "saving user settings" then it then says "logging out." I am unable to get on at all! It just keeps repeating that over and over again whenever I click on his name to log in.
After I tried logging in like 5,000 times, I then restarted the comp and hit F8 to see if I could start it in safe mode and try it that way. Unfortunately, it does the same thing. I even tried selecting the option to set the computer back to an earlier time when it worked normally and that didn't work either.
I thought about just reinstalling windows but unfortunately, a few years ago his computer's motherboard got fried and we had it replaced. The idiot at the repair shop loaded windows xp onto it but didn't give us a copy of it and said that if windows ever needed to install it again that we would need to bring it back to him so that he could do it using the same disk. We thought it odd but what could we do? Anyway, there is no option when hitting F8 to reformat or reinstall windows like there should be. So, I guess we're screwed? I do have a Windows XP Home Edition CD that we bought to load on to another computer we had years ago. I tried putting that into the drive but nothing happened. I am really at a loss here on what to do. I NEED to get back on to that comp because it does have some very important documents on it. We do have a home network setup but I am unable to access the files on that comp through one of the others because it says "path not found" because it's technically not logged on yet and therefor I can't get to it. And, unfortunately, I disabled remote access so I can't even get to the computer through one of our others on our home network. Sigh! What can I do?
I was reading on some other sites where people were having the same problem and they said the issue seems to stem from Lavasoft deleting or renaming the file "userinit.exe" or something like that but I'm not sure. I don't remember exactly what those sites said. Sorry.
I would appreciate any help anyone can give me. Thanks a lot!!
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