Recently after typing in my password for WinXP at the login screen it freezes at 'loading your personal settings', but only if I wait a short time before entering my password, otherwise if I enter my password right away everything seems to work just fine; this is very strange and hasn't happened before, anyone else experience this? Thanks.

Mercury, Hello. I am afraid that I have very little exposure to this problem. However, that limited experience might prove to be useful in solving your issue. Fist, can you boot into Safe Mode? Does the same problem show up? Last, but not least, does the Event Log record an error when the computer locks up? If so it would provide some clues to the cause. KB about using the Event Viewer in XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308... I've run into this problem twice; once on a WinNT box and another time on a Win2000 box. Both times the problem was somehow associated with the user's profile. I confirmed this by creating another account and checking to see if it exhibited the same behavior. Please post the results of your troubleshooting and we'll try to help you solve this issue. Cheers. -Benjamin

Basically, like I said it was freezing at the login screen at 'loading your personal settings', but only if I waited a short time before entering my password, otherwise if I entered my password right away everything would seem to work just fine. Now here is most everything that I have tried: Safe mode which I can enter and tried to change some things, but made no difference. Bios which I can enter and tried to change some things, but with no result. Changing account name and password no result. Turning off password login, worked, but isnt a good idea. Tried using Chkdsk c: /f with no result. Deleted DSL internet and security software, worked but defeats the purpose. Reinstalled DSL internet and security software and noticed that there was dialup software that seemed to be active so I removed it from the internet software and the registry and everything seemed to work fine until after I rebooted to the login screen and the screen saver eventually came on and the system locked up again, so I rebooted and waited to see if the login screen would freeze at 'loading your personal settings', but it didnt and i was able to login. There is a VSS and Event System error in Event Viewer. Thanks.

Mercury, Hello. It sounds like you have tried just about everything. Has the infamous login lockup problem occurred since you posted your message on the 9th? You mentioned in your troubleshooting that you had changed both the account name and password with no result. I would recommend creating a completely new account (call it Temp1) and see if that account exhibits the same problem. The VSS error in the System Event Log is worrying. Since you've already run CHKDSK I would recommend checking the System Event Log every couple of days and see if these VSS errors keep showing up. If so, then we've got to track down the cause of that error. Cheers. -Benjamin

The login only seems to occur now if I havent logged in and the screen saver comes on and that seems to lock everything up now, otherwise it works fine. I believe that some of the errors that I am receiving might be due to shutting down some of the more useless, resource hogging or dangerous things that microsoft has installed with WinXP, also the particular computer that I am having trouble with is several years old and I have simply upgraded and updated it to maximum.