I've come across a laptop with a very strange behavior. For some reason, when Windows (XP Home) boots up, lists the four accounts on the machine, and a user is selected, that user is then immediately logged out again.

On a rare occasion, I'm able to get to the point where the user's desktop wallpaper shows, but nothing else happens. The majority of the time it just logs out immediately.

Any ideas what might cause this?

I've removed some viruses from the computer (took out the drive and hooked it to another machine), but nothing major that I could tell.

I've also been able to install a second XP Pro install on another partition, so if there's anything I can do from that to correct this, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks...

I could certainly see this kind of thing as having been the result of one of the viruses.

I say, dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Yeah, I would, but I seem to be having weird issues in backing up the person's data (I'll get weird discrepencies in folder sizes between the existing and backed-up data, like the backup will report larger than the original). It's also annoying when stuff is kept in a dozen different non-standard locations like it is with this person.

I'm hoping there'll be a way to get back in.

Pull the drive and back it up from a different computer. Then reinstall.

That's what I mean. I did that and got all the data off. Then I compared the two and the sizes were all off. I can't find where the discrepancies are, either, and in some cases the backed up folders are larger than the originals, at least according to Windows. It's really weird.

So no ideas on the problem its self? Crud. I'm going to try backing up again overnight, probably using a drive imager or something. Hopefully that'll get everything...

What numbers are you looking at? The numbers in Windows Explorer (depending on Windows version) might be rounded to the nearest cluster (allocation unit). Over an entire directory, this accumulated error can lead to large differences.

Which backup tool did you use? For this kind of backup, if you don't want to lay down any cash, use ROBOCOPY.

No, the numbers were off by gigabytes.

I was using Teracopy to get the data off. Generally an excellent tool. I'll look into robocopy.

Close...

'I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure'.

I use to use that a lot when learning new encounters in EQ2 and they asked for any suggestions.

Okay, so I have an update. Despite my eagerness to avoid it, I did indeed nuke it. I backed everything up, did a complete format of the drive, and reinstalled the OS. I got the machine back to full working order, and had zero problems in the few hours I was working on it.

So I took the laptop back to its owner, waved goodbye, and was on my way. Sadly, that wasn't the end of it.

The owner called me 3-5 days later to tell me that he was having the same issues he was before (minus the ultimate lack of being able to log in, fortunately). I went over, looked at the computer, and it was that great diagnostic problem where everything worked fine for me, but sure enough a couple days later he's called again with slowness issues. He says that it will just slow to a crawl, where he's still able to do things, but it'll take much longer to do them, like 20 minutes to send an email. I'd installed a trial copy of NOD32, and it only found two minor virus files in the temporary internet files of his backup data, but otherwise it's clean.

Any ideas what might be happening? I did my best to find a polite way to ask if he'd done anything stupid after the reformatting that he might have also done previously, but he couldn't think of anything.

I'm a bit stumped...

He would never think of anything he had done, as being anything other than, something useful. The most common problem I see at work is when people misinterpret the question "Do you want to share this printer?"

It would have been interesting to see a before/after comparison of the registry.

Sounds like he's running out of memory. Perhaps one of the programs he uses has a massive memory leak.

Mmm.. not running Windows, is he?

Oh come on Mark, that is answered in the first post

It is Windows, and I'm at the person's home right now. When I first got on the computer I saw the symptoms - I was at the login screen, and when I tried to enter the user's password to log in, it wouldn't show the keypress, and was generally acting strange. I was able to log into a second account, though. Once in that account, things were not normal yet - I still couldn't type into things like the search bar, when I hovered the cursor over the taskbar it would turn to a text cursor instead of an arrow, and the start menu wouldn't open. Also, double-clicking on the Firefox icon on the desktop would open the properties for the shortcut instead of the browser.

However, about two minutes after logging into this secondary account, everything started working normally again. I then restarted, and was able to log into the main account like usual, with no problems whatsoever. I've since been looking through the computer trying to figure out what might be causing this, but everything looks normal! msconfig shows very few startup programs at all, and none of them are suspicious in the least. A HijackThis! scan shows a fairly short one-page list with nothing unaccounted for. And of course, a virus scan finds nothing more than stuff like temporary internet files.

I want to tell the user that it's working fine for me and that I can't find anything, but that's what I told him the last time. He says that everything worked fine, but "if I work on it for two hours it starts acting weird, delays my keystrokes, and looks like it's trying to open programs." I don't know what that means.

Any ideas?

Hmmm...
A coworker is suffering with a computer (Dell laptop w/XP) that seems unresponsive at times. The big clue was that sometimes the mouse cursor was not able to move onto the task bar. I googled and came up with some info, but that was a while ago and I can't remember the details.
I don't know if he ever fixed it- I'll ask.

edit:
Ah- the google search was still in the FF wonder-bar cache:
"windows XP task bar freezing"
It's a long shot that this has anything to do with your problem, though. Googling the symptoms might be worth a try.

The times I've had bizarre problems like that, it's been either a hard drive or power supply issue.

Sounds like a bad keyboard to me. Your description of not being able to see key presses and the like sounds like a modifier key is stuck. Same goes for clicking on an icon and getting its properties.

It's possible, but the clicking was done with an external mouse, and there's other general weirdness when he's having problems other than just input oddities.

I left him again with a working computer. I told him that if it starts happening again to give me a call. I want to see what the task manager is saying when this stuff happens, but the problem was not recreatable on the spot, and when I got there he was logged out so there wasn't much diagnosis I could do.

If I were you, I'd install a VNC server or similar. For one thing, you can try to help without being there. For another, if it still does it to you while you're connected remotely, you can discount keyboard and mouse problems.

A keyboard modifier key issue will affect any external input device, including external mice. A similar issue can also happen with remote/VNC connections, but should be isolated. That is, the original problem shouldn't affect the input of the dedicated remote connection, but it's possible to cause a similar problem with a remote connection if the remote server forgets to clear a key-down with a key-up (this has happened to me a number of times in the past).

Good point. I was thinking of a hardware problem with the devices or a port, but stuck keys are not uncommon with VNC connections.

The guy called back when the problem was occurring - nothing showed up in the task manager.

I got a little more clarification from the user (it's always tough interpreting and translating the average user's computer terminology). Apparently when he starts having difficulty, he keeps seeing the menus in the menubars of his windows popping open. I haven't been able to determine if this is the only issue, or if this is just part of it. I told him it could be a stuck Alt key, and if the problem happens to give it a good heavy tap, but he called back later exasperated that that wasn't working either.

I may suggest that he try to find some way to disable the keyboard and trackpad altogether, and plug in a keyboard and mouse for the time being...

*edit*
Darn, need some help here. I was writing up steps on how to disable the keyboard, and following along on my system, but it doesn't appear that it's possible to disable a keyboard, is it? Uninstalling wouldn't do much good either because it would just reinstall immediately, wouldn't it? Any ideas?

My favorite one is that when our internet connection is down, my wife tells me that "the server is unavailable", which is verbatim off of the Firefox error page. Not "none of the servers are available". I don't know what her thought process behind that is, but it always feels to me like she thinks there's one server somewhere that houses the entire internet and it goes down on occasion.

</tangent>

I assume it's a laptop. Just go back over there and physically remove the keyboard. Is it a Compaq, perchance? My aunt had a Compaq that needed its keyboard replaced for some odd reason or another. I can't quite recall what the symptom was, but I do remember it being odd.

Yeah, that's preposterous. The internet is a black box about the size of a small shoebox.

How else could Tony reboot it...

It's a Dell, and I'm not sure I want to do that. I think he's already a tiny bit irritated that I wasn't able to help him, and I think he'd be wary of my removing the keyboard from the laptop.

Strange that there's no way to disable it...

I, too, have had keyboards go bad in that sort of fashion, and have had to replace the keyboard. I tried completely dismantling the keyboard and cleaning all the contacts and everything, and it still malfunctioned.

Because of the way that the keyboard interfaces with PCs (old-skool PS/2 keyboard plug hooks into the A20 handler), a bad keyboard or a frayed cable could definitely cause the system to appear to slow down, too.

Replace the keyboard. If it's a PS/2 plug keyboard, replace it with a USB keyboard to completely rule out the possibility that it's a bad PS/2 jack.

Ummm I think it's a laptop he's working with.

tanstaafl.