Tech: XP Lockout

Subject: Technical: XP Lockout
From: bradfordian
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 06:46 AM

From work now as I can't get into my 'puter at home. Installed AVG anti virus, but profiles login kicks me out straight away. (I can boot up into DOS)Ah, but I can uninstall AVG from DOS (it says on their web site)by running SETUP/UNINSTALL, except that's a b@*%# WINDOWS program, not a DOS program. It seems obviously around initialisation, perhaps a ceretain flag set somewhere. You may not know the answer, but you might know someone who does, or somewhere I can get the info. Cheers folks. Brad

Subject: RE: Technical: XP Lockout
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 07:59 PM

If you can boot to "Safe Mode" you may have enough graphical interface to do the uninstall.

An alternative would be to try to boot to "Last Known Good" configuration, which looks for the last Registry setup that ran successfully. On my Dell laptop, holding the spacebar down just before Windows starts gets to this option, but there's no guarantee that your machine uses the same key for this.

Unfortunately, OEM WinXP installations are frequently modified by machine makers, so there isn't a "standard" for how to boot to the different configurations.

My limited experience with XP indicates that you can only get to "real DOS" using a DOS boot disk. If you use an "alternate boot" to what's on the hard drive, you actually get "Windows Safe Mode - Command Line Interface."

If you have your installation CD, you may be able to boot into "Setup," (Frequently an F2 just before Windows tries to start, although this varies), page to the "Boot Priority" settings and set your CD-ROM drive first, and then restart from the CD. From there you should be able to do necessary restoration. If your user profile is fouled, it may be easiest to create a new user, and delete the old profile when you get things working.

Don't forget to go back to Setup and restore your original "Boot Priority" when/if you get done, usually A: first, then C: (hard drive), then CD drive.

I've been reminded while looking at this:

ALWAYS make a recovery boot disk.

And I learned that in XP you can (and should) make a "User Profile Recovery Disk," although I haven't sorted out how - and it's too late now in your case(?).

John John