Windows logs off automatically while login

Posted on March 22nd, 2008 by Jason

We have been receiving mails from several readers that they are not able to login to Windows. As soon as they login, the windows show applying your settings, saving your settings and logs off automatically without logging in. This situation is really very troublesome and gets onto the nerves of a person who needs his computer badly for some important work.

The main reasons behind this problem is a corruption in the registry key which holds the value of the files which are executed while login to windows. This registry key can get either replaced with some incorrect value or it might get corrupt due to some virus / trojan activity. Lets see how to fix this issue.

We need to remotely access the infected computer from another computer on same network. Then we need to correct the registry key for userinit under winlogon.

Lets see the steps one by one:

1. Connect the infected computer to a network which has at least one healthy computer connected. Power on both of the computers.

2. From the healthy computer, Go to Start > Run, type regedit.exe and press enter. This will launch the registry editor.

3. Go to File > Connect Network Registry, by using this infected computer’s name or IP address.

4. Locate this entry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

5. At this entry there is a key names userinit, double click on the key and set its value to “C:\WINDOWS\System32\userinit.exe,“

Exit the registry editor, restart the infected computer. This is it. This will work for most of the computers.

For those computers which still don’t let you login, you need to run a repair setup on such computers.To run a recovery setup, see this link.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Computer, Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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5 Responses to “Windows logs off automatically while login”

  1. mus on 13 Aug 2008 at 8:06 am #

    well but I wasnt fast enough to do all the steps as the computer infected shut down before identified as an element on the network.
    the result,
    the object with the following name not found.

    How can I solve the problem if its a stand alone pc?

    can I change the registry on a slave disk?

  2. april on 07 Oct 2008 at 8:03 pm #

    how exactly does one “connect” the infected computer to another?

    and if it doesn’t let me log on/in. how can i tell what i’m doing?

  3. Paul on 05 Feb 2009 at 5:21 pm #

    I forgot a step. I included it in this post though.

    In response to Mus’ question about removing it with a slave disk, yes.

    The trick is, the infected/corrupt drive has to be the slave drive. So you need a fully functioning master, with an operating system on it (these directions work for XP and Vista)

    IE, put the bad hard drive into a good computer. Scan the drive and remove any viruses.
    Then open Regedit.
    Higlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then click File and “Import Hive…”
    Go to the attached hard drive, and look in the Windows\System32\Config folder and then select the one called SOFTWARE.
    Name it “IWILLREMEMBERTOUNLOADTHIS” or whatver.
    Open IWILLREMEMBERTOUNLOADTHIS and go to Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and change the userinit key to C:\WINDOWS\System32\userinit.exe

    Then go back, select IWILLREMEMBERTOUNLOADTHIS, click File, and unload it.

    This virut virus that’s going around is corrupting the userinit.exe so if you have the same copy of Windows, move the C:\windows\system32\userinit.exe file to the windows\system32 folder on the compromised hard drive.

  4. Adi on 16 Mar 2009 at 10:33 pm #

    hello! I turned on my laptop (XP) today and as soon as i logged on it logged me off! i have a lot of important information on it and i have no idea how to fix it. i really appreciate any help!!! :( please email me insatiablebabe@gmail.com

  5. viki on 24 May 2009 at 1:53 am #

    what do i do if it happens with stand alone pc ?????
    i tried by Reboot from CD option as per the procedure but with that option it is going for upgradation….!!!!! is there any different way to get rid of this problem?????
    please help lots of important data is there……
    actually i formatted my C drive but on second day i faced the same problem !!!!!! now what should i do? plzz help me………

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