[mguernic]

My brother's computer is on the fritz and I am determined to fix it rather than purchase a new one! It was flooded with viruses/malware and I simply want to go ahead and reformat it. However, once he brought it to me I discovered that it was stuck in a login-logoff loop once i started up. It starts up normally, the wallpaper will flash and even though he has never logged into to windows ever, it asks for a user login and if you do click a user it immediately logs off and saves settings.

I attempted to boot the system up via windows cd to simply reformat it, however, the screen will flash once in attempt to jump into the windows recovery but is immediately pushed out and to the windows login page. I am stumped! If anyone has any advice aside from me purchasing new gear altogether would be great! thanks in advance!

mike

(windows xp pro op system)

[Tpneer2]

watch the scredn when it boots to see what key to press to enter the bios area
then go to the boot section and set the CD rom as the first boot device
then withe xp Cd in the drive boot up and it should run setup
remember that this will destroy all info on the drive then when its done remove the Cd and let it boot up
after this is done you will need to go to windows update grab all those then the 3 service pax then go back and grab IE 8 then any progrma she needs

[mguernic]

I have already the CDROM as the first boot device and the hard drive as the second. booting up with the cd is still ignored as i said above. still stumped...

[diabillic]

List your boot order as stated in the BIOS.

I would also try another Windows CD. Is it the CD that came with the machine?

[mguernic]

boot order is 1 CDROM 2 HARDISK 3 CDROM

i unfortunately dont have another windows cd but i am certain it works as i just used it to reformat my main pc. i suppose trying another cd might work, but the simple face that I can see the blue windows screen with the grey bar at the bottom pop open momentarily just to get shot back out to the windows xp load screen yields me to believe that another cd would do the same.

at this point i am thinking replacing the hard drive is the way to go

[diabillic]

Do you have more then 1 CDROM? Try putting both CDROM options before the HDD. If you have more then 1 CDROM, the machine could be trying to boot from the CDROM not listed before the HDD.

[mguernic]

took your advice and made the startup CDROM - CDROM - HARDDISK
and still the same process took place, its just not wanting to enter that windows recovery, sob!
an other ideas before i go ahead and order a new hard drive?

[diabillic]

A bad drive wont prevent your cdrom from booting. I would try a different Windows CD. Note that you can still use another OEM CD as long as you put in the key that corresponds to your machine.

[mguernic]

its hard to imagine both drives are bad. if i put the cd into either of the drives while its sitting at the login i am getting the disk load icon on my cursor so i know its being read (that's not to say one doesnt work though). I will def try another OS cd if i can get my hands on one but I know the cd works as i just reformatted my main pc using it.

[wannabe1]

A bad hard drive won't prevent you from booting to the cd. Have you tried a different cd drive?

[mguernic]

yah i have indeed tried both the cd drives that are on the comp. other than that i currently have nothing else available. are you guys thinking its most likely the cd drives? they both work prior to obtaining whatever virus/malware/etc was on the computer, not sure if those could negatively effect the performance of the cd drives but it sounds like its possible?

[diabillic]

Can you boot any other bootable CD from that system in either drive?