[ACher91]

What about the rest of what I asked?

What? Umm... repair installation, I guess. By the way, if all I need is the userinit file, does it really matter which version Windows installation disk I get? (Probably does, but just makin sure...)

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Can you borrow a XP of the same type you have installed on your system from someone?
Home, Pro or Media
You have a sticker somewhere on your system that tells the original OS loaded and has your Reg key on it. You can use your key but you need to find a disk to borrow from someone to do the next steps.

You need the same version you have. as i stated above.
Also what about the reg key issue?



Give this a try. Without knowing a little more about what caused the problem, I can't guarantee it will work...and it requires the machine you make the disk on AND the machine you are fixing are both running XP.

Please download RC.ISO and save it somewhere you can find it.
Also download MagicISO.

Start MagicISO. You should see a window informing you about the full version of MagicISO.
In the bottom right select Try It! and the program will open.
Click on File and then on Open and navigate to the RC.ISO file you downloaded. Select it, and click Open.

First, we'll need to add a clean version of userinit.exe to the current RC.ISO

* In the upper right pane, double click on the i386 folder.
* Right click in the upper right pane and select Add Files...
* Navigate to C:\Windows\System32 and select userinit.exe
* Then click Open to add userinit.exe to the CD image.
* Click File and select Save As...
* Name the file RCplus and save it somewhere you can find it.


Next, we'll need to burn the newly created image to a disk that we can use to fix the problem.

* Put a blank CD-R disk in your CD burner and close the tray. If an AutoPlay window opens, close it.
* Click on Tools and select Burn CD/DVD with ISO.... A window will appear.
* Click on the little folder to the right of CD/DVD Image File then navigate to the newly created RCplus.iso Image file and click Open.
* In the CD/DVD Writing Speed drop-down menu choose the 8X setting.
* Under Format make sure that Mode 1 is selected.
* And finally, click on the Burn it! button to burn RCplus.iso to disk.


Once the disk is burned, put it in the machine you want to fix and restart it.
Boot to the CD just as you would with a Windows XP disk.
At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to enter the Recovery Console.
Choose the installation to be repaired by number (usually 1) and press Enter.
When you are asked for the Administrator password, enter the password or leave it blank (default) and press Enter.

At the C:\Windows> prompt, type the following commands pressing Enter after each one. Note: Watch the spaces.

D:
cd i386
copy userinit.exe c:\windows\system32
exit


After putting in the third command, you should receive the message 1 file copied which will indicate that the operation succeeded.
Now take out the CD and reboot your computer to normal mode. Try to log in and it should let you back in.

Thanks to wannabe1

[rshaffer61]

Can you borrow a XP of the same type you have installed on your system from someone?
Home, Pro or Media
You have a sticker somewhere on your system that tells the original OS loaded and has your Reg key on it. You can use your key but you need to find a disk to borrow from someone to do the next steps.

You need the same version you have. as i stated above.
Also what about the reg key issue?



Give this a try. Without knowing a little more about what caused the problem, I can't guarantee it will work...and it requires the machine you make the disk on AND the machine you are fixing are both running XP.

Please download RC.ISO and save it somewhere you can find it.
Also download MagicISO.

Start MagicISO. You should see a window informing you about the full version of MagicISO.
In the bottom right select Try It! and the program will open.
Click on File and then on Open and navigate to the RC.ISO file you downloaded. Select it, and click Open.

First, we'll need to add a clean version of userinit.exe to the current RC.ISO

* In the upper right pane, double click on the i386 folder.
* Right click in the upper right pane and select Add Files...
* Navigate to C:\Windows\System32 and select userinit.exe
* Then click Open to add userinit.exe to the CD image.
* Click File and select Save As...
* Name the file RCplus and save it somewhere you can find it.


Next, we'll need to burn the newly created image to a disk that we can use to fix the problem.

* Put a blank CD-R disk in your CD burner and close the tray. If an AutoPlay window opens, close it.
* Click on Tools and select Burn CD/DVD with ISO.... A window will appear.
* Click on the little folder to the right of CD/DVD Image File then navigate to the newly created RCplus.iso Image file and click Open.
* In the CD/DVD Writing Speed drop-down menu choose the 8X setting.
* Under Format make sure that Mode 1 is selected.
* And finally, click on the Burn it! button to burn RCplus.iso to disk.


Once the disk is burned, put it in the machine you want to fix and restart it.
Boot to the CD just as you would with a Windows XP disk.
At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to enter the Recovery Console.
Choose the installation to be repaired by number (usually 1) and press Enter.
When you are asked for the Administrator password, enter the password or leave it blank (default) and press Enter.

At the C:\Windows> prompt, type the following commands pressing Enter after each one. Note: Watch the spaces.

D:
cd i386
copy userinit.exe c:\windows\system32
exit


After putting in the third command, you should receive the message 1 file copied which will indicate that the operation succeeded.
Now take out the CD and reboot your computer to normal mode. Try to log in and it should let you back in.

Thanks to wannabe1

[ACher91]

There are actually multiple codes on it... I guess the one I'm looking for has 5 sets of 5 characters, separated by hyphens?

...by the way, why did you post that again?

[rshaffer61]

Yes that is the key code. I posted it again so you can see the steps without having to go back to the first page. If you use this method you can copy it from a XP system.. not relying on version but only that it is XP.

[treeuser]

I am having a similar problem in that when I click on either user on the login screen, the system starts to log on, then says it is closing network connections and logs me off. I have replaced the userinit file as suggested (from my original XP cd bought in 2001) but it makes no difference. any other ideas?

[rshaffer61]

Direct to: treeuser

Please start your own topic
Although your issue may seem similar there can be other factors that may need to be resolved.
By bumping on someone's topic it makes it confusing for the tech to understand who they are helping. This can in turn cause the wrong support to be given and can cause instability or worse to happen to your system.
Thank you for your cooperation.

[treeuser]

Oops! Sorry! I'll start another thread now. Thanks for the advice.

[ACher91]

Ahh hey.... I just tried it again with my one CD that my (working) computer recognizes... (the one I made earlier) For some reason the recovery console came up and didnt ask for the administrator password, OR which station to log into. It just went straight into the command prompt... O_o So, I started trying to copy userinit.exe over, and... it said it cannot find the file specified. I put the cd back into the working computer, and it turns out—fml—there is no userinit.exe file on it. -_- So, I tried to copy over the one from my windows\system32 folder, and I get "the disk in the drive is not a writable cd or it is full" ...which is complete crap because it most definitely is NOT full. The files on the disk are occupying about 7MB worth of space, and the cd has capacity for about 500MB.

Ugh, so close!! If I could just get that to work... I think I'll be at a breakthrough.

[ACher91]

...All right, I've made a little bit more progress. Just ignore that last post... (But I guess you were already doing that. Hah.)

Well, I've ravaged the internet looking for possible answers to my CD problem and it seems that there's no way I can wipe the files off of it. I've also tried installing other CD burning software and having it put the userinit.exe file on it, but it does the same thing (or, not does, rather) as the default Windows XP cd burning utility. -_- Basically, the cd acts like it's read-only and despite being nowhere near full capacity, it refuses to let me put new files on it or overwrite existing files...

ANYWAY. So, I went out and actually bought some new writable CDs. Yay. They are CD-R with 700MB capacity. So, I burned over the RCplus onto one with no problems. So far so good... But then, as I put it into the dysfunctional computer I receive no option for "press any key to boot from CD" as I usually do... So, I restart it and then explicitly tell it to boot from CD at the boot options menu, and it says "Selected boot device not available - Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility" Of course, no matter how many times I push F1 it doesn't work...

Dang. How I love running up the hill... just to see another hill. -_-

Any ideas, Mr. shaffer?

[rshaffer61]

OK did you burn the RCPlus as instructed? If so I believe it would be burned as a ISO file and not a data cd.
If you burned the cd any other way other then the instructions given it will not boot.

[ACher91]

Ah yeah, I had it burned wrong. D'oh. >_<

K, I burned it correctly now (albeit with PowerISO), but now I'm getting the blue screen again:

STOP: c0000221 Unknown Hard Error
\SystemRoot\system32\ntdll.dll

Edited by ACher91, 24 December 2009 - 04:37 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Hmm strange, is it booting to the cd or to the hd?
If cd then it seems the burn is corrupted.
Can you try it in another system to see if it works correctly?

[ACher91]

What do you mean hd? ...I'm not getting the "boot device not available" thing anymore, so it looks like it's finding the CD fine.

...I could try downloading MagicISO and burning it with that. Or, there is one other computer in my house.. I could bring my PowerISO over there and try it... OR get MagicISO over there and do it... But I'm gonna have to waste another CD every time I try this, lol, so I prefer to get it right fairly quickly.

[rshaffer61]

If you have another system that is working try booting to the cdrom with it. If it works then you know it's not the cd you burned.
What I meant by HD is are you sure the system is booting to the cdrom and not to the hard drive(HD)?

[ACher91]

Gahh... I tried it with my computer and the same thing happened.