HELP! Major Crash need help

Please forgive this letter from being generalized, as I have posted and emailed this to many places in hopes of getting some help from SOMEONE.

THIS IS LONG, again I apologize.

I have a major problem with my wife’s computer I can’t figure out. Here’s low down on the computer itself –

Make and Model - Compaq 6300
Processor – Intel Pentium 4 - 2.4G
Ram – 256M
Harddrive – Quantum Fireball 40G
Removable – DVD/CDRW Combo
Operating System – WinXP Home w/SP1 and all updates to 11/28/03
File System – NTFS


The skinny –

I cannot boot up the computer at all. It goes to the logon screen, then shows the wallpaper ONLY, then goes back to the logon screen, with no name, as I only have one user on the computer, but have it toggled in the control panel to show it on startup, then BACK to the desktop, again showing ONLY the wallpaper. It seems to be an infinite loop. I’ve tried everything imaginable, from booting in safe mode only to get a black screen that says safe mode, nothing else, no task bar, nothing to safe mode command prompt only to get the same results as with safe mode. Last known good configuration done nothing. I’ve contacted Comcast, and more than half the tech support people didn’t even know what the software was! I have a TON of data on the computer that I was in the process of backing up, but this happened and now ultimately it sits awaiting. I need help so I do not have to do a system recovery and lose everything on there, which totals about 300 dollars worth of business documents, and 3 gigs of downloaded files, plus about twenty personal documents I can’t really afford to loose.


Can someone help me???? I figure if I could find someway to boot in dos via floppy and access the NTFS drive, I can find the problem. I’ve been unsuccessful in doing so thus far. I’m an advanced user, and sure I can find the problem if I can access the drive, but apparently I’m not advanced enough to make a boot disk to go to DOS and access the NTFS drive so I can either look at the boot.ini file, some other files I’ve read that may hold the problem, or do a system restore from dos. Again –

H E L P ! ! !

Here’s more detailed information about the cause and effect.




Now the Problem.

We have Comcast High Speed Internet service (http://www.comcast.net) and they have a utility which helps protect children from accessing unsuitable material. Since I have a 16 year old step-daughter who likes to do everything she’s told NOT to do (grin) I decided that this would be a wonderful idea to install and use (later, I found it was NOT) This program is called Comcast Security Manager (http://beta.comcast.net) On that page it describes it as “you will have access to parental controls and pop-up blocking software. You will be able to screen out objectionable Internet content and to block unwanted advertisements from opening new windows during Internet browsing.” However, when downloading and installing, it took control over EVERYTHING pertaining to the computer and blocked a child’s access from even the computer itself. From what I can gather, it took Administrative Rights away, and allowed those rights only when switching to the person who set up the program and made different user accounts (ultimately myself). Being beta software, and knowing there may be minor bugs in it, I downloaded and installed it. However, there were no legal disclaimers of any such as with most beta software. Even installing the program presents no disclaimer or EULA.

Again, being in beta form, I expected some minor quirks, and took the few I did have in stride. However, after constantly when the program started to constantly crash on booting up, and some other quirks that got very tiresome in nature, I decided to uninstall the Security Manager (via Add/Remove Programs of course). That’s were the problems began. After uninstalling it, I rebooted. Everything seemed fine. I went to get on the Internet 2 days later, and it wouldn’t connect. I thought it may have been the service or the lines, but when I hooked my computer up to the cable modem, it worked, and still works fine. So, I decided to uninstall and reinstall the modem. I done just that, and still, I couldn’t get on the net. When using the Security Manager, I couldn’t get on the net until I ‘logged in’ to the Security Manager, so I assumed when I uninstalled it, it didn’t give my Administrative Rights back, or didn’t change back an Internet setting. That being the case, I decided to do a system restore. THAT was a bad idea, and that’s when it all happened.

After doing the system restore and rebooting, all I was greeted with was a Windows Installer window, and then a pop up error box saying “to uninstall Security Manager, please use Add/Remove Programs” and then an OK button. When clicking OK, it went back to the Windows Installer windows, and again, the error message above popped up and began in infinite loop. I tried ctrl-alt-del to try to end the task, but a window popped up and said that the Task Manager has been disabled by the Administrator (I’m assuming the poorly made and never to be used again Comcast Security Manager changed this as I surely did not). Being a patient person, I decided to play it’s game and clicked ok on the error window, and then try canceling out of the Windows Installer window. I done this for about 15 minutes, with 100 plus clicking ‘No” and ‘Cancel”. I was surprised my patience paid off as I finally was presented with the desktop complete with all my icons and the taskbar. However, everything I clicked or opened ran the Windows Installer and tried to Install the very disliked now Security Manager. I decided to restore BACK to when the security manager was uninstalled. Again, a very bad idea. Now all I get is the infinite wallpaper/logon screen loop and can do nothing what so ever.

Again, if there is anyone out there that can help me, I’d be indebted for life to that person. Reading the forums pertaining the this ‘should be illegal to have available’ software (http://forums.comcast.net/forum.jspa?forumID=28) there are more that 5 or 6 people having the same problem and tech support is doing NOTHING about it. Once I get my wife’s computer in order, I am going to get with this people in a class action suit against Comcast.

For the record I have tried going through Compaq support and they have no idea how to fix it except a full system recovery. That is not an option now.

Thanks in advance for your time in just reading this. Eternal Gratitude if you can help me fix it!

Danny

dannywatson@comcast.net

 

be patiet danny there are some VERY knowledgable people surfing these boards... i'm sure you'll be able to find the help you need....

 

if you have the MS WinXP home CD ..not a recovery cd given with many pc's but the actual Operating system CD, you may attempt to try to run the repair process on it but booting off the cd and following the prompts to run the repair.

OR

get another hard drive. Install it in IDE1 as master and install the the other as slave or master on IDE2.. then format the NEW hard drive and install WIndowsXP on there.. you will then be able to access all files on the OTHER drive too.

 

Her's came with recovery CD's. Not an actual WinXP cd as most computers come with OEM OS's and are basically on another partition. So, that does me no good. MY computer is an upgrade, so that doesn't help either. I could drop her HD in my computer... Good idea.

Thanks.

Danny