I suffered a crash that requred a power-off and restart. Now when WinXP
starts up, it shows me something very odd. It shows not the user/password
screen I'm used to seeing upon bootup, but some kind of system password
dialog box I've never seen before. It shows my username, but will not accept
my password, even though it is absolutely the proper password. It's as if
the system no longer recognizes me at all.

The only thing that gets me past this XP password dialog box prompt is
hitting 'ok' without putting in ANY password at all. Windows starts up, and
shows me as the user, and all my files and programs are there, but the
taskbar shows only four of my many program icons. If I log off and then try
to login again, the same weird password dialog box appears. When I try to go
to control panel... user accounts, I get an error "Windows Cannot Open the
User Accounts Control Panel".

The crash occurred after coming out of a screen-saver mode, it might have
been sleep mode, I'm not sure. I left my computer running with many
applications open (acrobat reader 7, netscape web browser/mail 7, Word 2000,
Filemaker Pro 6, Final Draft Screenwriting software 5). When I came back from
screensaver, all the programs were closed and the computer was unresponsive.
I had to do a power-off reboot.

How do I recover from this? Could this be a spyware or virus attack? Seems
odd that my usernames/passwords would be messed up like this. I have
SBCGlobal DSL and an updated Norton Internet Securty with Live Update that
scans once a week, and I never have virus or spyware problems with this
setup.

Can anybody help me please?

First thing to try is system restore

rgds
Roberto

"swalvarez" <swalvarez@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1392002B-B239-4EA1-9BA3-2C7D421C1EB7@microsoft.com...

swalvarez wrote:

It sounds like many files - including system files - were corrupted by
the "crash". It does not sound like a virus/malware problem. First try
the System Restore as suggested by Roberto. If that doesn't work, you
can try making a new user account. If that account works properly, copy
your old user's data to it.

If that doesn't work, you are probably looking at a Repair Install. Back
up your data first.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Malke
--
MS-MVP Windows User/Shell
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic"

Thanks! I didn't know XP could do this! I restored to the day before the
crash and that fixed it. I'm back up and running.

Thank you!

Scott

"Roberto" wrote: