Windows XP endless boot loop

[Wolfx25]

Hey all,

Upong booting up my pc today, Windows XP became stuck in an endless looping upon booting up. It gets to the Windows XP loading screen, then the pc shuts down, and the process begins again. The only major changes I can think of are that I installed the "Zune" theme for windows. That and the logout options menu and login screen had changed to the type that you'd see on a networked pc (ie. no switch user option, everything is in a drop down menu).

Any help would be welcomed!

Wolf

 

[Squeetard]

Boot into safe mode (F8 on startup) Go into system properties-advanced-startup and recovery, and disable 'reboot on system error'

This will halt your system and give you a chance to get an error message to help troubleshoot. Let us know what error you are receiving.

 

[Wolfx25]

COMPLETE EDIT: Ok, so I did that, then I got a message saying: The Logon user interface DLL E:\WINDOWS\WlanGINA\Version1.040\Wlar has failed to load.

It told me that to fix this, I needed to reinstall the DLL. Is this doable through the recovery console?

Wolf

 

[enaberif]

COMPLETE EDIT: Ok, so I did that, then I got a message saying: The Logon user interface DLL E:\WINDOWS\WlanGINA\Version1.040\Wlar has failed to load.

It told me that to fix this, I needed to reinstall the DLL. Is this doable through the recovery console?

Wolf

Why is it saying drive E:?

What is your default drive letter for Windows?

WlanGINA refers to or seems to refer to drivers for D-Link.

Boot into safe mood and remove any and all D-Link software and drivers and also take note of what drive Windows or your main hdd is.

 

[Wolfx25]

Yup, E: is my default drive letter. I actually tried the steps that Squeetard gave me again, and now I'm getting a C000021a error along with a blue screen.

 

[Shadowmeph]

umm you did make a backup before you changed the login screen because that is where your problem is. if you cannot log into safe mode then you can either try "Last Known Good Configuration tool to restore the operation of Windows" or do a system repair by using the the original XP disk just boot from the disk and wait for it to do all of the stuff until it gets to the screen that asks if you want to install or press R for recover which R is what you want to do. Now if you don't have the original XP disk then you are going to have to boot into dos and try the Console commands such as Fixmbr and Fixboot.

 

[enaberif]

Yup, E: is my default drive letter. I actually tried the steps that Squeetard gave me again, and now I'm getting a C000021a error along with a blue screen.

Drive E: should never be the default drive letter ever. If it is that will cause you grief. I suggest a data backup and reformat of XP.

You probably had a usb card reader or usb key plugged in during install of XP which through off the drive letters.

 

[Shadowmeph]

Drive E: should never be the default drive letter ever. If it is that will cause you grief. I suggest a data backup and reformat of XP.

You probably had a usb card reader or usb key plugged in during install of XP which through off the drive letters.

why is that? I don't think that it makes any real difference at all I have two hard drives and have 7 OS's and they all work fine

 

[enaberif]

why is that? I don't think that it makes any real difference at all I have two hard drives and have 7 OS's and they all work fine

Believe it or not a lot of programs look for the drive letter C: as default and it can wreak havoc on a system.. believe me I had to do many re-installs because of this.

But his original program sounds like something with the theme change broke something or their d-link drivers took a crap.

 

[Shadowmeph]

well when ever you change something like a boot screen you should always back up your boot.ini so you at least have the option to boot from the original boot screen I have allot of Portables and thinstalls so I don't really have to many programs install on my drives