asked on

After clone of drive, Windows XP Logoff immediately after login

I have Windows XP Pro. I attemped to clone this drive to a larger drive. After the Clone was done I booted up with the larger drive. It brought me to the windows xp login screen. I entered my username and password. Then it logs me off right away. This happens for every account both in normal mode and safe mode. I should also mention that this machine is part of a domain network. My Original drive still seem to work fine. I've tried many times with different clone programs like Norton Save and Restore, DriveClone Pro 5, Norton Ghost 9 all with the same results. I've read lots about the userinit.exe and regedit stuff but none of that seems to be working. Any ideas...it is defenalty related to the cloneing process.

Rob Williams

There is an issue where this occurs with XP, you might want to look into. Somehow the userinit.exe value in the registry gets changed and/or the userint.exe file in the system32 folder gets replaced. The repair is to replace these with a repair CD or 3rd party or remote registry tools. See the bottom of the following EE link (not the accepted answer) or the Adaware link below. Neither time I came across this was it the fault of Adaware but the repair did work for me both times
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/20972739/Windows-XP-logs-in-then-logs-off.html
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_wel_screen.htm
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21267818/Norton-ghost-2003-clone-XP-pro-SP1-giving-error-on-new-disk-image-error-0x8009006-and-loop-on-login.html

mshellnutt

ASKER

Thanks RobWill

From the info you provided it led me to Look at the registry of my destination drive and i noticed that in the
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version there was a key called Systemroot it had a setting of D:\WINDOWS and my original registry has C:\WINDOWS. I will change this and try it out see what happens. Thanks

Rob Williams

If the system root were wrong I doubt it would boot at all.

mshellnutt

ASKER

Ya that didn't seem to change anything. I've also done all the other registry things mentioned in your links. Do you think maybe the file userinit.exe is corrupted?

Rob Williams

It is possible, but I have run into the issue 3 times now and each time the key below was missing or incorrect. Note the comma at the end.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit
Data: c:\Windows\System32\userinit.exe,

mshellnutt

ASKER

I've check that key and it is identical.

Rob Williams

Sorry that is the only issue I have come across

mshellnutt

ASKER

ok Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Expert4XP

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

mshellnutt

ASKER

Expert4XP, Right now I am able to boot up to the login screen of XP , then I login...after a second it auto logs off, so you think that this utility will fix this for me?

Expert4XP

Yes

Expert4XP

If you had originally used a new/blank/unformatted hard drive for the cloning, you wouldn't have had the problem. But because XP has previously formatted the drive and assigned it a drive letter (such as f: or g: etc.) XP REMEMBERS the drive letter.

When you boot from that drive, xp tries to assign f: or g: again for booting, which is incorrect.

sramesh2k

What Expert4XP said. If you're cloning your XP installation, clone it to the same drive-letter. This is because the registry stores the absolute path to the old drive letter in various locations.

This article should help.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

Unable to log on if the boot partition drive letter has changed:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249321/

sramesh2k

Addendum:

To edit the registry offline, see: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/peboot.htm