Black screen during startup or login

[john414]

Hello, I am trying to fix a strange problem with WinXP Home, SP2, on a Dell Dim2350. My dad broke the system about a month ago, I think by setting a background picture, then deleting the picture without changing the picture selection in the control panel. Now the computer goes to a black screen right after the initial splash screen finishes. I have run Norton WinDoctor, Dell diagnostics, virus scans, spyware scans, etc.
I deleted some bogus entries with regedit and HijackThis to get rid of startup items that don't exist any more.
Here is the strange part. If I start in safe mode or Enable VGA mode, and don't change the resolution settings, I can log into any of several accounts. If I change the screen resolution, I can still log into all but one account (the one Dad was using).
All of the Windows updates, virus updates, etc. have been applied on this machine. I updated the video driver during the debugging process with one that I got from Dell, but when the problem happened, he had not changed very much stuff.
Now, on the "bad" account, sometimes it will get partway through the login, but never complete loading all the startup stuff, before the screen goes black. Once this happens, I can't just restart and log into the other accounts. I have to go back to safe/VGA mode. It's almost like it has to be "reset"...
Does anyone have any bright ideas about this?

[Miz]

Sounds like your dad's user account has gotten corrupted. Rather than spend hours trying to fix it (which seldom works satisfactorily anyway), see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile for instructions on setting your dad up with a new user account with his old data intact.

[john414]

Hi Miz,
I am keeping my fingers crossed, but at this point it appears that the computer is now working OK. Here is a summary of what I did.
1. Ran Registry Fixer (part of VCom's FixIt Utilities) to do some serious registry repair.
2. Created a new user account (the KB article neglects to mention that you need to actually log into the new account before copying the data from old to new).
3. Copied the data from a third account, as described.
4. After logging into the new account to verify things were working pretty well, deleted the corrupted account and kept the data files. (Otherwise, things were still messing up.)
5. Restarted several times to verify the new account does not corrupt the startup.
I still have some things to do to clean up, but the settings and data were copied (for the most part).
I am going to dump the prior system restore points (they were probably corrupted anyway).
Also, there are a few minor nags of things that are not working correctly, but I am sure I can get those fixed.
Thanks for the great tip!

[yourego]

Hi , Ive had the same problem, after loading winxpsp2 it changes resolution for the loginscreen but completely black. So all things running but who turned the light off .
I fixed it by using systemrestore in savemode. This is in my opinion the best there and should not be turned off! I deinstalled my last installed program with it and all was back to normal (The program was ventrilo, a gaming internet chatprogram). I guess it made some bad entries in the register.