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XP logon nothing clickable


JayScore

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Hola,

Got a curiosity. Just booted, and the logon screen, where I know from other's machines there should be piccies and usernames, came up with all the usual, but no piccy, no name and nothing at all clickable.

This is doubly curious because when I install I make sure that I do not enter any passwords, and so go directly to the desktop. Obviously this is why I got no piccy and username. I swear I made no changes to the system before I shutdown earlier. So why the sudden appearance of this "dead" screen? It was straight to desktop last boot.

The only way to logon from this screen is to Ctrl/Alt/Del, which brings up a small window, with my username, and with password field empty. I don't have to enter a password, just click OK, and off we go. Anyone else met this? Is there a way to get back to my original boot up - straight to the desktop. (I don't want to have to enter any passwords, ever. I look forward to an installation button that says, "This machine has no passwords, no individual users or administrator, no "Are You Sure" messages, and no clicking thirteen OKs to install a program.")

(Not urgent, I'm going to do a reinstall soon as last time I changed to NTFS - out of curiosity, and it's buggering up my access from DOS. I can see A: and C:, but all others are invisible. So back to FAT.)

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Do this for me and let me know what comes up:

open cmd.exe

type the following command:

net user

Now put that info on here. Also, check these registry and let us know what their values are.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\System
DontDisplayLastUserName (dword value)

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Version\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
All entries and their values.

That might help us give you more info.

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Hola Idontwantspam (Me neither. My mail.com gets tons from Russia. Good job they got good filters.)

Anyway, thanks for responding.

Running cmd.exe \ net user:

Administrator (computer name) Guest

HelpAssistant SUPPORT_388945a0

The command completed successfully

("Guest" just hangs alone, nothing follows it.)

---------------------------------------

1st registry entry:

dontdisplaylastusername REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

---------------------------------------

2nd registry entry:

(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)

(computer name) REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

HelpAssistant REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

IUSR_ REG_DWORD 0x00010000 (65536)

IWAM_ REG_DWORD 0x00010000 (65536)

NetShowServices REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

SQLAgentCmdExec REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

TsInternetUser REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

VUSR_ REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

Boot's changed again since posting. It now starts with a two-tone blue screen with just two lines of text near the top "Microsoft Windows, Build... Service pack2... 1 system processor... [memory]" (About 40 seconds)

Then a black screen with a few lines of text in the middle, "Checking C:... D:" (5 seconds)

Many tray icons have gone including Windows' firewall\security centre.

And when the "dead" screen appears, I have to Ctrl\Alt\Del twice to get the small window. Wierd.

I bet some of the above actually means something to you, doesn't it. Gibberish to me. Took me a while to find HKLM. I aint got HKLM. Oh yeah. Duh. Big fiesta here last night, so I forgive me. :wacko:

Got two headaches now.

J.

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Sorry if I didn't explain sufficiently. By HKLM, I mean HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which is in the registry editor, regedit.exe.

I had a *little* bit of trouble interpreting the net user command info. Can you please put it in a code box? Also, there should be several columns; could you just write out one long column? Thank you! It looks like the only accounts there (that matter, anyways) are Administrator, Guest, and (computer name), which I assume is something like VO048D9843nf or whatever the h- it might be.

As for the second question... that value determines whether or not the last user to log on is showed in the logon dialog you get when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del twice. That logon box is actually the logon box that is used when you have the welcome screen turned off, or if you're connected to a domain. There's nothing "weird" about it; it's supposed to be there. ;) Since that value is set at 0, the username of the the previous user to log in should be shown. If there's nothing there, something odd is going on here. :wacko:

The last one is what decides which users should be shown on the login screen. To hide a user, you would make a DWORD value with their username as the name of the dword, then you'd set it's value to 1 to show or 0 to hide. See the value (COMPUTER NAME)? Try setting it to 1 and see if that helps. Just double-click it and delete the 0 and type a one, then click OK. The user might appear now. Hopefully. ;)

As for the no-button-clicking blah blah i don't want to be bothered stuff... that's not too likely to happen. What I would recommend is for you to just have 2 accounts. Make an account called "Default" or "User1" or whatever - your name, banana, it doesn't matter. Then, create another. Call it something else. Always use the 1st account, and if things get messed up, you can try going to the other account to fix things. Then set the 1st one to log on automatically. Voila!

Boot's changed again since posting. It now starts with a two-tone blue screen with just two lines of text near the top "Microsoft Windows, Build... Service pack2... 1 system processor... [memory]" (About 40 seconds)

Then a black screen with a few lines of text in the middle, "Checking C:... D:" (5 seconds)

Many tray icons have gone including Windows' firewall\security centre.

And when the "dead" screen appears, I have to Ctrl\Alt\Del twice to get the small window. Wierd.

:unsure: Huh. That sounds like something checking your ram and hard disks... bizzarre. I don't really know what to do; there is probably someone here who does though. :whistle: (< click) Let me know if this helps at all... I hope it does!

And one last thing... can you please open cmd.exe and type

echo %username%

And tell me what it says?

Edited by Idontwantspam
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hola,

Sorry about the delay. Been offline. My mobo was a HP pull. It had everything onboard except a LAN. I was using a DLINK card. Shortly after my last post, Windows ' Found New Hardware came up. It was referring to the LAN card. Why it had suddenly lost it since last boot, I don't know, but nothing I did ever made it visible to XP again. The drivers did nothing; install with card in or out. I remembered I'd had a lot of trouble with it when I first got it. I had to seek help, MSFN and DLINK - who failed to answer any of my mails. I very quickly got another mobo with LAN onboard. That mobo died, and I reused the HP. After hours of trying to make the LAN card work, I lost my temper, yanked it out - power still on, slapped it against the case, rammed it in again, turned off, and walked away to calm down. :realmad: The next day I booted, and the thing worked! No Found New Hardware, no need to install drivers. It just worked straight away. Maybe I frightened it. That was about two months ago. When it died this time, I tried the angry bit, but this time it didn't work. I've now reverted to an older PII mobo with LAN onboard. It's a bit slower, but reliable. Then, it gets worse, When I hooked everything back up, the C: drive refused to work. It had just died. So, I had to return to my previous C: 6.6G.

This drive already had XP loaded on from last time. Which is handy as reinstalling XP on the other drive required reactivation. Pain.

Now it gets curiouser. Despite a different hard drive, mobo, different installation of XP, the same unclickable screen requiring Ctrl/Alt/Del twice happens. I expected that problem to have gone. I 'm certain it wasn't happening when I changed the drive last time. XP Security Centre is still there.

I'm still interested in following up, but I'm leaving for the UK tonight, and I won't have access to this machine for about a month. So I could not answer any questions. But if you return to this thread and you have any ideas, please do post them.

While in the UK, I'm going to try to get a new mobo, and maybe a bigger hard drive. This will require a reinstall, and I'll be interested to see what happens then.

Again, apologies for the gap, and thanks for the responses so far.

Running cmd.exe echo username responded by giving my current username. Buuuuut... The username presented is not the same as presented everywhere else. The first letter of the surname is lower case, whereas everywhere else it is upper case. Mean anything, Poirot? If this is relevant and turning your cogs, remember I don't want any bootup screen, and installed without choosing any login inf, and no passwords, in order to go straight to the desktop. Only me and the wife use the machine, so security is irrelevant.

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