Logon - logoff loop

[Theodore Long]

This is Windows XP desktop which was running very fine since a year but don’t know what went wrong suddenly today when I started the system and tried logging in, I got the screen saying “loading personal settings” and it went back to the logon screen where I need to enter my username and password. In short, it log off immediately and automatically.

As a troubleshooting I tried repairing the Windows after which I was able to work successfully but just for once. Next time when I logged off and tried logging again, I faced the same problem.

Well, I repaired Windows again and tried finding out if there is anything wrong in registry. I went to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and found this “C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe, %SystemRoot%\iProtect.exe”. So this seems to be the problem. I changed it to C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe and system started working fine.

But again when I logged off, same problem started. Do you guys have any permanent solution for this? Will deleting "Windows Security Manager" from registry fix the problem?

[Bollea]

Well am not sure whether deleting Windows Security Manager will fix the problem but to me the cause of the problem seems to be any malware or antivirus. So before you delete or make any changes in registry, just try to scan your system completely with any Good and Update antivirus as well as SpyBot Search and Destroy.

[hindustnidude]

You should actually delete the winsecure but that would be not enough to fix the problem completely. You will also need to go through malware removal steps to make sure your computer is completely clean. Start with booting into Safe Mode and running deep scan. Run Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-aware and remove Spywares from system. Run Windows Update and install each and every security patches available.

[zidane1313]

It may be a issue with your AV your running as at home i had the same issue with Trend-micro while i know no permanent fixes a temp work around is as follows logon to safe mode with admin privileges then find the directory your current pccillin is working from change the folder name ie"thisfolder" to "@thisfolder" Restart your computer and you should be able to login to xp like usual. you can then change your folder back to whatever you like and should be able to log off and sign back in to have pccillin working again, the thing is though from what i can tell if another user attempts to log in after you have changed the fodler back the autologoff will run again of if the day passes it will run again so it is a tedious program if you want to keep your av up and running

I have not attempted a reinstall of the AV or installing a completely new AV but i can only assume these may fix the issue..