major problem with userinit.exe

mrcollins2005 · Aug 6, 2008

I have a friend who has a problem with her computer. Better her than me but I am trying to help. When she boots up it says "application error" "userinit.exe failed...." it then goes to a blue screen with no start button or icons. I ctrl alt deleted it and that did not work. I F8'ed it and could log in under administrator. When I ctrl alt deleted then I could pull up a menu and tried running different things like init.exe, explorer.exe and all it wanted to know is what to open them with!! Even in safe mode I have no start button or icons. Should I just reinstall the OS? How do I save her files? Or does anyone know how to get around this problem?

TimW · Aug 7, 2008

This may not be a malware issue, but try this first:

Boot using your winxp cd.
Enter recovery console.
at the command prompt go to

C:/windows/system32

next type:
Dir *.exe

Do you see
wsaupdater.exe

If so, type

copy userinit.exe wsaupdater.exe

Exit and reboot normally. You should now be able to logon.

Run regedit

Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

In the right pane, you should see

C:\WINDOWS\System32\wsaupdater.exe,

Change it so that it reads:

C:\WINDOWS\System32\userinit.exe,

That should solve the problem, if the malware was the one that caused the issue.

Tell me what happens as we then may need to do the malware cleaning READ & RUN ME FIRST. Malware Removal Guide

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major problem with userinit.exe

mrcollins2005 Private E-2

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member