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Welcome Screen Turns to Classic Logon

Last Updated: 2/14/10

When the computer is turned on, it won't login in properly. I would get the classic logon screen and then could only type in administrator, when it logged in, it would automatically log back out and bring back the login in screen. This is what I did to get it back running:

Boot with the Windows XP install CD-rom and go to the Recovery Console (pressing R) Log on to the correct WINDOWS partition, normally the 1.

Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\config Give the command dir and you will see the hive called software. Copy this "corrupted" hive to e.g. C:\software.bak using the following command:

copy C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software C:\software.bak This is to

have your Software Hive / Registry handy to edit it later with the REG tool. Now to get your system bootable again..... Copy the REPAIR version of this SOFTWARE hive (kind of registry) to the operational location. Do this with the following command:

"copy C:\WINDOWS\Repair\software C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software"

Now a running SOFTWARE hive is copied to the operational location. exit the Recovery Console using the exit command. After that, I as I mentioned, I starting getting an automatic Administrator login and then would get a message that says unable to log you on because of an account restriction. I had to go into the registry to

HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/Currentversion/Winlogon and change the autoadminlogin from 1 to 0.

This eliminated the problem. I know that you said that repair version of software was from when the computer first started, but for some reason, it has everything that was on there before the problem originally surfaced. It is now working fine.

Note: Pushing Ctrl + Alt + Del will also turn the welcome screen into the classic logon screen.



Keywords: login windows xp registry classiclogon