XP wont boot

[Worship]

Hey guys

A friend of mine recently brought his pc to me and I can't seem to figure out the problem.

The computer boots normally but then instead of going to the user screen (you now choosing the user to log in as) it goes straight into his username. It asks for the username and password (I just left password blank and its fine) but then the desktop immage appears but thats it. Sometimes a Data execution prevention message appears or windows explorer error. However I can get into windows task manager but that it. The same thing happens with safe mode, and lost known good configuration.

Any suggestions?

[Jonboy]

Enough suggestions?

Okay?

[po10cy]

edit: sorry double post, interwebs grr

[po10cy]

boot from your windows cd, select the option to install windows, it will detect ur previous version that is installed, select "repair" instead of a fresh install, and let that run. his files n settings will remain intact.

[Worship]

Just finished trying that and no success. Still has the same problems, but also now shows a svhost.exe error when booting. It also now lets me select the username but then it does the same as it did before by starting to log in then just showing desktop background and nothing else

[Synthesis]

When you get to task manager click File->New Task (run) and type in explorer. Your desktop should show. If it shows quickly and disappears, cool, that means you have a virus. Take the HD out and scan in another PC. Check my sig and use combofix for starters.
If explorer shows and stays, it's a problem with something in startup (start-run-msconfig-startup), but it worries me it does it in safe mode as well. check drivers, uninstall recently installed software/drivers etc.
And if you can get into explorer with above method, try also creating another user. Could be the user-account that's corrupted, I've had that often and a new user-account sorts out the problem.

[prozac5000]

had a couple of laptops and pc's come into the work bench like this recently either blue screening or doing exactly the same thing

my guess is that there is a new virus out that wreaks havoc with the boot files in xp

EDIT

backup, f disk, format, re-install......