XP hangs at "Loading Your Personal Settings"

[Namchan]

As per one of the Microsoft Article, this problem usually occurs on the PCs connected with some network. So, as you said you unplugged it with modem, thats great, if any lan is connected, remove that as well, reboot the system and now try to logon. See if it works. For more, info. Check out this Microsoft Article.

[Alige]

the easiest way to get rid from this applying your personal setting you just unplug your network cable when you start your computer it will not waste your time...
Thnx
Ali

[stlouisx50]

Originally Posted by swat253

I a experiencing all the symptoms of hanging at "loading your..." also.

System Restore did not work, logging in with the other user accts did not work, waiting for CHKDSK to finish so I can try nko's fix above...

From searching for solutions to this problem, I found posts as far back as 2003. You'd think MS would have already created a downloadable utility to address this aggravating bug!

It seems I have solved the issue for the time being...

I ran a full virus scan (avast!) from safe mode and found 3 instances of corrupt files WITHIN MY AVAST SOFTWARE among others corrupt files that should have been detected long before the full scan. Figuring my AVS was one of the first programs to load, I deleted my "avast!" software and logged right in on the first attempt...

I have used "avast!" for several months without any issues, and it has worked better than many of the big names. I'm currently running a trial version of Kaspersky while I wait and see if any of my other PCs runnig avast! develop the "loading your personal settings" issue. I'm not giving up on avast!, but I am wondering how an antivirus program downloads a trojan during daily software updates...

Using somebody else's thread made it appear that you were answering a
question and that may account for nobody replying. And, this is a very
busy site.

Install it on your machine and give that drive another scan. I worked on a
PC this weekend that had the same symptoms and after removing 400+
infections, it worked fine.

Thank you for the fix. Avast had my computer all messed up. My start bar and icons were missing. I tried the 10+ fixes found by searching the net but none of them fixed the issue. I went to microsoft and found many more solutions but none of those worked either, however they mentioned going to safemode and disabling some startup programs. The only 2 I disabled were google search bar and google search bar helper. Then I restarted and everything came up as normal this time however when I went to see why avast had a red !. I tried to enable the program and the computer froze. Once I restarted the windows log on screen appeared and I clicked an account in which it froze again. So I went back to safemode , uninstalled avast and restarted. Guess what? The computer ran as normal. So Avast must have installed some corrupt files. While the computer is in working condition at this point I am reinstalling Avast and hoping I have no further issues.

Thanks again.

[Dakshayani]

I found one similar thread over here. You can take a look to this and see if this is helpful to you or not.