WinXP Virus: Logs out as soon as I log in

Hey guys,

A friend of mine came to me today with a laptop and it's super messed up. It boots up just fine, until the Windows XP login screen. If you try and log in, it says 'logging in' for a few seconds, then switches to 'logging off' and kicks you back to the login screen. It doesn't work in safe mode, and it doesn't work on her profile, guest, or admin.

She said she was working in the afternoon and a popup for 'you have a virus! run this scanner!' came up. She clicked it cry) and ran the scanner, which brought on even more problems. She installed AVG and ran a scan, which killed a bunch of the viruses, but upon restarting her computer, she found herself unable to log in.

I know that if I can get to the desktop I can gut the viruses, but I can't seem to figure out how to log in. Any ideas? I've read that it might be a registry issue and I'll have to do a repair on the registry,

I did some research on the problem and can't actually find a solution. The threads and posts I came across on this issue never actually concluded, so I was hoping someone here might have a better idea.

She is a student and has a ton of valuable information for school, so ideally I'd like to avoid a complete reformatting.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

Bump!

Can anyone help me? It seems like a pretty obscure issue, and I can't find any more information online.

Thanks again!