The pc is set up for all family members (4 of us) to all have our own user account logon. 3 of the 4 accounts will not boot to the desktop but one will. There are currently some virus' and other "bugs" that we are working on but could they be the cause of the boot problem? And why just some but not all of the user accounts? Thanks in advance.

Whichever account is most infected ( hopefully not your main admin account ) is the culprit ,, Ie: the lesser user account without full admin privledges ,, which is able to infect other lesser accounts...

If the virus has locked up the admin privleges and tied everyone else down with no privleges, it can then restrict access to the C:\WINDOWS folder to admins only. Because the Windows services require this folder, it effectively blocks everyone. Go into safe mode, and log in with admin privleges. Right click on your Windows folder and check whether the other users have at least read privleges. If they don't, they will get booted out automatically when they try to login.

I would say that rather than "work on the virus" if you know for sure it is there, then it is time to make removing it a priority, before you lose everything on the machine. So rather than worry about user entry, what virus and what are you doing about it. Sorry you sound so casual, and I cannot help but think you should be reformatting by now. I hope you know that you need to shut off the System resore to remove virus and Trojans.

Boot to safe mode and enter the "Administator" Profile. Run your Updated Anti-virus and ad/spy ware programs to remove any virus... Once this is done. Simply log off and log onto the next user,, Run the same programs, Do this for all users... Reboot the machine and enter the profile that works.. Run the scans,, Repeat for all users to make sure they are clean.. IF: The users cant boot and all virus,spyware is removed, it is possible it corrupted the user data.. In this case enter the User Control panel and create new users.. Use the "explorer tree" and transfer over the saved fiels... Once the user logs on you can then safly delete the old corrupted user profile. Junk Internet Explorer, Get Firefox! You'll be happy you did.

Thanks all for the replies. First I am not taking this lightly or "casual". Actually it is my daughters (and her family's) pc in Jacksonville. I am in Va Beach. I am trying to do some " leg work" and get some ideas as to what to do. She first notified me of the inability to log on to 3 of the 4 user accounts. They have cable modem high speed internet with comcast. Her husband is Navy and out to sea. She has Nortons 05 a/v and internet security and ad-aware but did not know she had to update virus definitions or objects. After I had her run live update and update adaware, this is when I discovered all the crap that was on there, multiple 10+ virus' and tons of spyware/adware/malware. I sent her spybot and hjt and regclean. She (they) also never deleted temp files or cookies and the first virus scan I had her run scanned 800K files. The system is now down to about 200k. I had her to boot to safe mode but she said nortons a/v would not run in safe mode for her. I suggested that it would likely be faster and better to just slick the hard drive and re-load windows. She is reluctant to do that right now. We both have XP and have the "remoted assistence" feature working so I can "see" and take control of her pc remotely. That is cool. I posted here to try and get some additional insight to help her. Nortons has found adware.180search adware.abetterinternet and several others that would NOT delete. Some others did delete. She had like 19 items all together and I believe down to maybe 4-5 now. Any more thoughts/comments/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

It might be time to nuke it from high orbit. Does the computer have a CD to return it to the OEM state? I kind of hate to suggest this because the way you are helping. If she can't get it working then you can't help remotely. A less dangerous route might be to see if there are any real long time ago restore points. I have had little luck getting rid or any virus and not having to do a major fix. One other idea might be to just delete the users that are infected and delete the files they had. If you make new users be sure they are limited. Only one admin and only use it for admin. General surfing only needs the limited user. If all fails then you might get her going with any of the live CD linux's. Dam# small linux and knoppix can be used for most things until the sailor returns. On base they might have a DS, ET shop that might offer some help?