Win 2K server hangs forever after Local Logon : At Loading your personal settings

[effluvium]

Please help me,

2 days ago I shut down my PC standalone server 2000 as usual.
The next day, my PC hangs forever after the password and Logon box at "loading your personal settings".

Unfortunately, there's no other account for any other user (only administrator account with a blank password. It is a quite fresh installation of Win Server 2000 and didn't managed yet to create other accounts in this server). This machine is a standalone server (NO DNS, NO Active Directory, NO Domain ).

I tried to reboot in Safe mode, Last known Good config and all other options in F8 startup menu, but no way to log on. Same symptom: Hangs forever. I'm sure it's not a virus, because I scanned the hard disk some hours before this trouble.

I'd like to know if it is possible to avoid to reinstall again Windows server 2000 (I mean is it possible to track what is blocking the logon process at startup ? is there a mean to detect which service fails to start)

Is it possible to access the NT registry, if I extract the hard disk and put it as a slave disk in another Win 2k server ? If yes what hive in the registry should I Load to modify?
Thank you for any suggestions. (Avoid a full reinstall is my goal)

(Unfortunately I have no other account except administrator one)

[FReakMaster]

see this similar threads : Windows xp stuck at loading personal settings

Windows Server Stuck at applying personal settings

2003 server hangs at Applying Computer Settings - Can't login

[effluvium]

Thank you for the links you posted,

But unfortunately these don't help at all. XP is not Win 2000 server (and has more flexibility to fix these problems)

The main reason is when you're dealing with Win 2K server, you have no issue to create other accounts unless you were logged completly or via SafeMode.

In this situation we have to forget SafeMode or other MSDOS commands, because I don't see how yopu could create another account. Add to that you cannot roll back till the last good config point.

So the problem remains here: THe only thing I could see to avoid reinstalling all the OS, is to extract the Hard disk, place it as a slave disk in another standalone Win 2K and delete the file C:\Doc & Settings\Administrator\NTuser.DAT