Usually, I don't have to click on any users on the Windows welcome screen to log into windows, because I am the only user on my desktop. However, now at the welcome screen I have to click on my user to login, but what's worse, it won't login! It just shows "loading your personal settings..." for a long time then my desktop wallpaper shows for a second and Windows reverts back to the welcome screen again.

I have a suspicion that this has something to do with my editing the registry in an attempt to disinfect my computer from a solow virus. However, I only did what was recommended on the symantec site: http://www.symantec.com/security_re...

Maybe somebody could look through those registry keys and spot one which should not be changed? Thanks. Your help is very much appreciated.

The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit should read:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,

Thanks, razor23, but I realized that I can't even get into windows to change that registry key. I tried safe mode, debugging mode and last known good settings and all of them have the same problem as what I had initially. Is there any way around this?

Well, there's a few things you can try.

You can get a friend to make you a BartPE CD, and boot off of that.

If you have a home network and your PC is WinXP Pro, you can use regedit from a second computer to remotely connect to your PC.

Assuming your PC doesn't have any hint of a firewall, you could use something like PsExec to launch regedit on your PC and make the change.

If all attempts fail, a 'Repair' install should do it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...

Note: You will lose all the Microsoft updates.