freeze at login

[taintedplay]

I dualboot xp and vista. Both have a password. I can log into vista no problemo, but in xp, it freezes at the screen to type in my password. Mouse wont move, and keyboard and mouse are on, but neither do anythign at all. Cntrl alt del does nothing, or any combo ive tried. Any ideas?

[eyeCpc]

If you can't get up into safe mode you may end up performing a repair install or the manual method of engaging the system restore feature to roll back something you may have put on lately. Assigning passwords on a dual boot has it's definite drawbacks as you now realize.

For seeing the restore feature started you would enter the F8 startup menu for XP and select the safe mode /command prompt only option seen there. You enter the following command at the dos type command prompt. %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

The MS page on this is seen at How to start the System Restore tool at a command prompt in Windows XP in case you end up mistyping the command in to see this done. That's easy enough to end up doing! "gee how did that go now? "

[cichlidkeeper91]

LOL. I kinda had the same problem with me. Well I have XP on one HDD and Vista on another. What I did was I unplugged the power and IDE cord from the Vista drive then did it through that. Not sure if it will work but it did for me.

[eyeCpc]

That will depend on where the boot files are located. If the ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini files are on the Vista drive... ut oh! You would then have to repair the XP boot information seeing it rewritten after copying the other files over to the XP drive.

Another option just to see Windows running long enough to use some cleaners would be the repair install method. Once the main files are redone Windows should then boot up normally again long enough to sweep the drive.

The ideal method for seeing the best results would be simply reinstalling XP to see a working copy again. From there you then add XP to the Vista boot loader after using the Vista startup repair option if the Vista drive is left plugged in.