I have a dual boot (both are XP). I have had this on many computers, all well. Have 4 partitions in order: 1st OS (primary, NTFS, boot partition), logical FAT32, primary “data’ NTFS, 2nd OS (NTFS). I (intentionally) deleted and restored the 2nd OS partition with a previously made Partition Quest drive image (.pqi). The restore went fine but when I (or any admin or user) logs on they are immediately logged off, even in safe mode; the login window simply comes back. I have no viruses I guess. I looked around on this site and googled. People are saying that using the recovery console, or repairing with the original XP CD are NOT the ways to go. People are talking like it could be the registry. I tried but was unable to open the (not booted-up) 2nd OS registry (i.e. the 5 hive files from %root%\system32\config) from within the 1st OS with the usual reg. tools (import registry etc)? Is there any way to do this? It may be that I made some changes to the 2nd OS after I generated the drive image (like relocated the page file or re-ordered the drive letters), but (e.g.) if there was no page file I would get a memory error or something no? I am guessing the log on problem is some windows XP SP2 security “feature” the security accounts manager (or whatever) recognises that something has changed and is trying to protect the content or some bs. Any ideas, thoughts? Thanks! Ian

None of the above. Your image restore didn't go back to the same drive letter. In other words you made a image of say c:. You restored the image to e:. It boots but the registry pointers are all wrong and hence it can't find its brains like where its pagefile is, etc. BTW in MS speak your "boot" partition is the system partition. Where the windows folder is is considered the boot partition according to microsoft. Give a person a fish you feed them for a day. Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

Wanderer, I hate to beat a dead horse, but ... If you do a fresh install, leave the C: drive empty and install the OS on the D: drive, is the C: drive still a system partition? :-) Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

wanderer i really appreciate that! BUT....I have forgotten what the original drive letter for the 2nd OS would have been (doh!). Can you (or anyone) tell me where that could be found in the 2nd OS's files. I can read them all using Drive Image's "image explorer" but obviously there are 1000's of possible files to trawl through (I made a start...! thanks once again! Ian thanks)

I can't think of any way to get the drive info off the PQI file. Maybe someone else will. The obvious guess would be C:. If that's the case you are out of luck, unless you want to sacrifice your current C: drive. I guess you could try restoring it to all the likely possibles like D:, E:, F:, etc. That's a lot of work. I don't know if it's worth it to you. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!