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Can't log in after XP repair reinstall

Did XP Home - repair reinstall. What happens is that I fire up the computer, enter my password, the desktop briefly flashes up for a split second(no icons) and then it immediately logs off and goes to password entry again. tried guest account, Administrator and standard accounts in safe mode. Same problem. Read something on another site about a program, XP_FixLogon, that may correct problem. Don't know how to get program to install and run when I can't log in to operating systen.
Does anyone have any experience with this or know a solution to this problem?
Thanks in advance!

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pablovr

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SOLUTION

nobus

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bazooka9265

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It turned out that the registry wasn't the problem after all. The userinit.exe file was missing from the windows\system32 folder. I wasn't able to expand (extract) the file from the XP CD using Recovery Console, or any other means. What I wound up doing was to install another XP operating system on the same partition as the original. When completed, I had 2 windows directories. I changed the file settings to show hidden files, opened Windows Explorer, and copied the userinit.exe file from the new windows directory to the old. On reboot, I selected the old XP to boot from and it did! I changed the boot order to use the old Windows as default and will delete the new directory after I am sure that everything is stable. So far...so good. By the way, the original problem occurred when Spybot Search and Destroy found a Vitumundo trojan? and, when it "fixed" the problem, wiped out the ntoskrnl.exe and other critical windows files. A repair reinstall wasn't an option, initially, as the original windows directory wasn't being found by the scan during Windows setup.
I hope some of my efforts will help others. Thanks to those who suggested things to try.