Windows Vista problem - Owner Welcome then logging off

[seanyoung]

Help me please.

My laptop Compaq on Windows Vista Home Premium has been problem free, I can surf the net, watch DVD, no problem with minor nuisance: After powering on and the very brief system music sound, indicating successful log on, instead of taking me to the desktop as it should, "temp user" button appeared on the centre of the screen several times before, I just clicked on it and it'd take me to the desktop, to do my regular tasks, a nuisance but bearable...

But now all of sudden I cannot, as an "Owner" button appears. If I click on it, it'd say "Welcome", then immediately "Logging off" on the screen, 10 seconds later it will loop back to the "Owner" button page, I can't get out from this vicious cycle to go to my desktop.

I took it to the Geek Squad (I bought it from Best Buy), they offered to reintall windows and charge me for $199 or something. I might lose everything...

I thought I might get somewhere online.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

 

[hang-the-9]

If Geek Squad does the work, you will probably lose your files, they are not careful with backups. Most don't even know what to backup or how.

Could be that something replaced the logon program to something else, the registry key is HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and should have the value of "userinit.exe"

You can edit that key and see if that's the issue, either with a second computer on the network and connecting to the remote registry or with a boot disk that has a registry edit tool. You can get one here http://www.pcregedit.com/