Problems restoring user who has zillions of startup items launching--

[metchette]

Running into fairly annoying problem restoring a user's PC--hard drive crashed, so went to tape and restored, no problem. However, what we are seeing now is that the machine will boot, hang, then restart, boot, hang, repeat. What we speculate is that the user had lots of applications (and probably spyware) configured to launch upon startup. Retrospect Helper cannot finish its post-restore tasks--WeatherBug, MSN Messenger, LimeWire, Wallpaper, Screenshots, etc. keep trying to boot up while the Helper is trying to complete its final tasks. Booting up in SafeMode just hangs the computer. Good news is that everything was restored, bad news is, well, everything was restored....any suggested solutions?

 

Thanks,

 

Ken

[Cbarnhorst]

Go to Run, enter 'msconfig' and uncheck everything. Then reboot. The Helper should still finish. If not, do another restore but without the system files. The system files can be corrected if needed with a 'repair install.'

[metchette]

Thanks for the tips, Cbarnhorst. I should have included more info on original post--the system being restored with the zillions of startup items is Windows 2000 Pro, and I believe that "msconfig" didn't ship with NT or Win2000 (it will work if copied over) but the restored system never lasted long enough before rebooting itself to try it. Good idea with the "system repair" tactic, I will try that next time.

 

We ended up imaging a new computer for the afflicted user and restored documents to it. We had to abandon the first restore attempt, it never allowed us to log on long enough to do anything other than watch it endlessly reboot itself.

 

Dantz, is this is problem you've heard of before? See any other way out? This is the first time we've encountered this.

 

Thanks,

Ken