Sam said:
I have already tried system restore.
Unfortunately, I find more evidence that System Restore IS (as I
suspected)
only monitoring sectors that contain designated OS related files...
That's not entirely correct. System Restore will also affect third-party
programs and their registry keys, i.e. if you install a program and restore
to a point before the new program was installed, the program and it's keys
will vanish. Likevise, if you undo the restore, the program should reappear.
Sadly, this doesn't always work...
I've narrowed down the problem to Verisoft Access Manager - it won't let
me
log in (Safe mode allows me to log in) - so now I am trying to figure out
how
to disable it (no luck with msconfig... seems I need to know which
registry
keys to mess with because they have replaced the functionality of some of
the
standard windows functions)
I can't help you with that software (or the wizard you mention in your other
post), but hopefully someone know it and can. Anyway, you should take a look
at Verisoft's and your computer manufacturer's (hp?) support sites.
Here's some general Microsoft advice on troubleshooting a Vista OS that wont
start:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/d2c85f69-c062-49a5-8ccc-27af998b4fed1033.mspx
You should try the System File Checker tool (sfc) in safe mode first though.
This tool might find your problem, and will let you restore corrupted system
files, if you have any.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833
Charlie42