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Winnt\system32 box

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7 replies

by nroberts

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I've seen this with NT and now with 2000. When 2000 boots up and a user's desktop appears, a Winnt\system32 box appears listing all of it's directories and system files. Can not figure out why this happens. Click the "x" box and machine is fine.Any clues?

7 replies

by rdunn

Check your system registry (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Run) to see if you have a registry key referencing something with a null value (should show up as ""). Also check HKCU as well as HKLM.

good luck!

by beermonster

Hi,
I can't for the life of me remember where the key is, or where I read about it, but this is usually caused by NT \ 2000's habit of opening the desktop as it was when you last logged off IE opening whatever folders you were browsing when you logged off. If you have logged in, made changes, then copied your ntuser.dat over to the default users folder to give everyone some settings then chances are you still had the system32 folder open when you logged off that session. this means that every new user is picking up the open system32 folder when they first log on. Hope that makes sense .....

by syscokid

Answer #1 is correct. Here's the MS reference:

support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q170086

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