If you can get in to an admin level account in Safe Mode, create a new

account and try logging into that in regular mode. If you can get in,
consider that the old profile may be corrupt, and migrate the settings and
documents to the new account.

Is your Pagefile too small or have no Pagefile? If it is then read the

following KB article.

Error Message: Your System Has No Paging File, or the Paging File Is
Too Small
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315270

Other Possibility:

Windows XP Welcome Screen Appears to Stop Responding (Hang) During Logon

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816873

Not to revive an ancient thread but since this is what came up several times in my
Googling, I thought I'd post the solution that worked for me:

My exact symptomology was that, when logging in, I'd get stuck at the light-blue
screen / "Loading your personal settings" window. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, I was able
to pull up the Task Manager. I went to File -> Run and started a shell prompt
("cmd").

I ran the command "sfc /scannow". This command verifies system files against those
on a Windows CD (so yes, you'll need a Windows CD). When it finds a corrupt file,
the file is replaced. After this command finished running, I had my full XP desktop
waiting for me.

XP Pro desktop box with Norton Antivirus

The guy was cruising along and Norton popped up with a message saying it found a
threat (background scan I would guess, but it could have been live).

He clicked to "remove threat", Norton said it did and that he should re-boot.

He did, and now when it gets to the "loading personal settings" and it starts the login
music it goes into an endless loop.

It has the "loading personal settings" box, then it flashes a another pop-up and goes
back to "loading personal settings" and restarts the login jingle.

This happens in every mode including Safe Mode.

No Alt-Ctrl-Del to see whats running, no window functions at all.

I did an XP Re-Install/Repair and the problem is still there, so I assume his profile is
pooched, most likely do to the Norton repair.
Now here is the hard part...
I disabled the login screen via:

1.Click Start and Run

2.Type "Control Userpasswords2" and press enter.
3.Uncheck the box for "Users must enter a user name and password to use this
computer."
4.Click Apply and Ok.

That means I can't select another user, nor can I create one.

I pulled the drive and put it on my machine, ran the normal scans (anti-virus, spybot
S&D, Ad-Aware) and found nothing of consequence so I figure I need to either find
the file to edit the "show/Don't show" login screen so I can give another login a try
with another user, or edit the default users "startup programs" file and remove
everything but the basics.

After 20 years you'd think I'd know how to do this at the drive level but I don't.
It's tricky because the machine itself won't come up to any function.
Anyone know what files on his drive I need to edit to give it another try?

That makes sense. I do that on my own sites from time to time.

I just figured it was related so I resurrected an old topic ;-}

The machine in question was running updated Norton in background and warned of a
threat, he clicked to remove it, and now as soon as Personal Settings load on startup
it goes to Logging Off.

I scanned the drive on my box with McAfee, Spybot S&D, and AdAware and found
nothing of consequence and the problem remains.

I'm going to load Norton 2007 on my box and scan it with that, but in the mean
time, any ideas what I can edit on the customer drive hooked to my box to change
the user?

My Norton is XP and my current box is Vista so I loaded AVG (newest)

It found these on customers drive and removed them:

"F:\Program Files\Ares\Ares.exe";"Trojan horse SHeur.BUVB"

"F:\WINDOWS\system32\svchostw.exe";"Trojan horse Generic13.AAU"

Whoo-Hoo! SUCCESS! Nothing worked for me until I did the following:

Boot into Safe Mode (F8 before Welcome freezing)
Start > Run, type msconfig
I turned off everything and could then boot up. By turning services on 8 at a time I
found my culprit. I'll tell you the short answer in case you don't want to go through
all that.
UNCHECK Plug and Play!
If that doesn't work for you, you may have to do it the longer way to find the
corrupted file. I was able to turn on Normal Startup (under General tab) then just
disable Plug and Play once again. It appears to be the lone gunman.
Good luck.

Same symptoms - user logs in, comp freezes at 'loading personal settings'.

Keyboard num lock and caps lock respond (led lights change). Mouse moves pointer.
No other response (ctrl-alt-del etc.)

I get normal ping response, and computer responds well to compmgmt.msc connect
to remote computer. No relevant looking info in log files.

Background
Info in this thread hinted for corrupt programs (usually AV, that get updated all the
time) as a reason.
So I extrapolated corrupt programs and their updates generally (windows automatic
updates as a most probable culprit).
Corrupt AV software was less probable, because Sophos probably had problems with
corruption when updating sometime in stone age and I suppose currently checks
download accuracy with at least three checksum types. If there is an AV updating
problem, it just doesn't update and you get a notification about it (both on target
machine and on managemend data base).

Actions and effects

I try to stop automatic update service, and after half a minute or more get response
it cannot be stopped. Same trying to stop main AV service. When I try to stop AV
reporting service, it stops and when requested starts again normally. I disconnect
compmgmt.msc from comp in question.

I request shutdown -f -r -m=_machine_ and request seem to be accepted. The

syslog entry from USER32 says

The process winlogon.exe has initiated the restart of _machine_ for the following
reason: No title for this reason could be found
Minor Reason: 0xff
Shutdown Type: reboot
Comment:

Machine stayed locally unresponsive, so I powered it of by long press on on/off

button.

I started the machine into Recovery console and requested chkdsk /p /f for partition
with startup files, and the partition with operating system. Both commands reported
extended checking or recovery.

I didn't request to check the user data partition at the time (it is large, would run a
long time, to be scheduled to run after work hours, and is much less often corrupt)

After restarting from rec console into windows and log in as admin type user no non-
response problem was detected.

Event log entry from check for partition with operating system reported a lot of
repairs (often repaired wrong which by experience mean a lot of files effectively lost
or corrupt). I recall no info on bad blocks, so physically the disk is probably OK.

After log in into user account it is normally responsive. User does most of her work in
MS Office (i think 2003), so started word, excell, access and outlook and all
responded fast without detected problems.

Because I suppose some files were damaged or missing, and to be on safe side if
they were part of office installation I requested detect and repair (I think from MS
Word help submenu).

It reported to be successfully completed, and user found no problems up to now.

But I see about 12 of new type (for this machine) DCOM errors in about 2 minutes,
supposedely starting with the time when repair was requested.

The log entry message is

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission

for the COM Server application with CLSID
{B20E899D-B079-479D-A4DC-10F758D9CD9A}
to the user _domain_\_user_ SID (S-9-9-99-9999999999-9999999999-
9999999999-9999999999-9999) . This security permission can be modified using
the Component Services administrative tool.
(actual SID numbers different)

I suppose several objects reported fixed by chkdsk were actually left corrupt or
missing. So I have direct hanging problem at user settings probably solved (by a
solution not before described here), and am having to go search for DCOM
problem/solution info.

Conclusion
Generally, whoever has a fast program partition restauration solution it would