XP MCE Stalls When Selecting User

Hi,

Windows XP MCE Service Pack 3, stalls when booting either in safe mode or normal mode.

In normal mode, at the welcome screen selecting a user does not prompt for the password it stalls right there. The mouse responds. I can see the pointer moving but the system doesn't respond to any input.

In safe mode, once selected it stalls with an hourglass and does not display desktop icons.

Does anything here sound familiar? Could this be a boot virus? If so, how could I diagnose and/or clean the virus? What good tool can I download to create a boot disk to boot the system and clean it?

thanks.

 

Update:

Keyboard and mouse are USB. I removed the keyboard and booted with mouse only. After boot, at the welcome screen the mouse would not respond. Pressing the power button of the system displayed windows is shutting down. The system shutdown properly, I then placed the mouse and keyboard in different usb ports. After a while, the system booted and the mouse and keyboard worked enabling me to log in.

Then the mouse moved but did not respond to input. When placing the mouse over the taskbar, the hourglass would appear. When placing the mouse over the desktop the hourglass does not appear but the mouse does not respond to input. Double-clicking or right clicking on icons or the desktop does nothing.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

Thanks Chaslang,

I kept rebooting and eventually after many tries I was able to get to a point where it booted in normal mode. I couldn't get SuperAntiSpyware or SpyBot S&D to run without crashing. I found a post on the forum about Tdsserv.sys, followed the instructions and was able to get through most of "Read First". I cleaned well over 600 malware items and the system appears to be running much better now. And I can now boot in Normal and safe mode pretty well for all users but one. I have to look into that one. It hangs trying to personalize settings for IE.

There are only two remaining weird problems. One is that on booting there is always a found new hardware wizard that popsup attempting to load drivers for 'unknown' have no idea what that's about.

Also, there is an explorer window that always pops up (windows explorer not IE) pointing to c:\program files\Common folder. I don't know how to go about investigating that.

This is not my computer, so I can't say exactly when the problems began, but my friend told me it was about a month or so ago.

Thanks for your help. I'll check the software forum if this post has to be moved.