I have a problem. I have had Spybot popping up that there is a problem with userinit.exe for a few days. I have just kept canceling because it is valid. I was going to deal with the error later. The other option was to delete that and all associated files.
This morning my wife turned the laptop on. Before having a chance to cancel out, my toddler hit ENTER at the moment Spybot came up. Since reboot, the machine logs in and then back out. This is the ADMIN account.
I have tried to boot into all SAFE MODES but none do. Just logs right out. I tried Recovery Console from CD and did expand D:\i386\userinit.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\userinit.exe
but I get the error:
Unable to create file userinit.exe
0 file(s) expanded.
The laptop will not let me eject the CD when in Recovery Mode, so I can not put in a CD with a copy of userinit.exe to copy over. I do not want to force the CD drive unless I really need to with a pin.
No floppy drive.
I tried a repair but using a different CD so I had to enter in that CDs code, but still no help. Later, I found a “reinstall XP” CD that came with my laptop, which originally I thought was a “restore” CD and that is why I avoid that CD at first.
I can hook it up to my network, but what good is it if I can not get Windows started to get a new copy of userinit.exe in system32?
Please, does anyone have any suggestions other than a format?