Me2Ewe said:
I desperately need your expert help people!
I am running XP Pro and have two names that can access XP. When I click on
either one as soon as the desktop appears everything freezes up I can
select different things but nothing happens. I have run all the basics
Adaware, SpyBot, Norton Antivirus, both in regular & in safe mode.
Nothing seems to help. I did have a BackWeb problem and deleted some of
them from the Registry, only BackWeb was deleted, any ideas? I did have
Spy Sweeper installed but it said it was contaminated so I had to
uninstall it.
Thanks Bruce
Most of the time, I find that symptom on computers where *something* is
trying to start, but for whatever reason, it's failing. So the startup
sequence stops there. Sometimes it's a driver that's not loading, and
sometimes it's a program that's not fully installed, or not fully
uninstalled. It could be spyware or a regular program or the remnants of a
virus that's trying to load. Or it could be some Windows component that's
gotten corrupted or deleted.
Unfortunately, that's a lot of options, and there's no quick fix. You could
try doing a repair install of Windows if you're leaning towards the "windows
component" theory. Otherwise, it's a matter of picking through everything
that's loading at startup to see what's gone wrong.
And of course, there are a multitude of ways to do that. If the system
starts at all, you can check the event log to see what's failing. Or you can
head right to msconfig and turn things off. It helps if you know what you're
looking at. Or you can run HijackThis to see what's starting up and weed out
possible culprits.
If the system doesn't start in any mode (and I'm not sure from you post
because at one point you said it freezes, but then you say you've run
programs and deleted SpySweeper...
If it doesn't finish booting, you can choose to log the boot (from the same
menu you choose Safe Mode from) and then you need to get into the computer
to read that log.
There are also third-party utilities that can report on the startup
programs, but part of their usefulness depends on you knowing a little bit
about what needs to start and what doesn't. If you have to look everything
up, it can be pretty time consuming, and if you just guess, it can make
things worse. BackWeb, by the way, is not always malicious. There's a
BackWeb component that installs with some printers, and some manufacturers
use it for their "help" software. So it's possible that something is looking
for BackWeb, but can't find it.
Have you (or can you) try system restore?
