Immediate Logoff on Boot Up

For the past two months or so I have had to kill and restart explorer on boot since for some reason processes necessary for startup didn't well...startup. However, when I turned on my machine today to do the same process, Windows chose to log on for a second or two and then immediately log off, and this does not change with a restart or repeatedly attempting to log on. Any suggestions on how I could get back onto my account would be very much appreciated.

EDIT : It occurs to me now that last night was the first time in a long while that I let Windows Update run on shut down...

 

Hi and welcome to the BBS,

If it seems to be a problem involving Explorer, run Error Checking (chkdsk). Explorer oversees the file system.

Do you have any "out of the ordinary" systems set up under that account? Your My Documents set up to run from another drive for example, another might be extremely large files.

Matt

 

Try logging on in Safe Mode. To do so, press the f8 key repeatedly immediately following the POST screen at first part of boot process. That will give you the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Select Safe Mode.

If that allows you to get in, try running msconfig and trimming all unnecessary start-up programs. Then try a normal boot for test.

If on the other hand, you aren't able to get into a Windows session that way, try booting to the f8 screen again and choosing the "Last known good configuration. "

If no joy, try disabling the "Disable automatic reboot on system failure" option.

If that doesn't work, you're likely going to have to do a Repair Install of the system. A Repair Install replaces system files only and will not erase any of your personal data.

If the Repair Install fails, you'll need to do a full clean install. You'll need to get some sort of backup made before you do that since all data will be lost. Do you have any backup images? Any kind of backups? Do you have any Imaging software such as Ghost or True Image? You could image the unbootable drive and use it for retrieving your data after the clean install.

HTH

Edit, Oops, I just noticed your experience level so I hope I didn't dumb this down to the point of offending you.