Windows xp auto log off

I never got a direct responce to this problem but i took some advice i saw on other forums

What i eventully did was i downloaded the recovery thing from the Microsoft site and booted from that

then i went in to the command prompt mode thing and copied the missing file from another computer i have

but im sorry to say i dont remember what the file was? hopefully if you look around you can find what it is but i cant remember...

ill try to find the originally site that i found most of the steps on and link it back here later

hope you figure it out ^^

I think I know what his "thing" is. Ive had this same problem and ran through about 50 posts for fixes yet my situation is always slightly different so Im stuck. His "thing" (i think), is replacing the userinit.exe file. You extract it from n xp cd n then copy it to the local drive of the machine not booting. Then in recovery console you paste it into the system32 folder. There are fixes all over explaining this. However after 2 full days of constantly unhooking the problemed hard drive from the laptop and hooking it up through usb onto my working laptop, then putting it back in the bad laptop to test, Im ready to throw the laptop through my window... Here is my issue if someone can please help.

Problem.... I turn on Dell laptop. Welcome screen comes up. I type in the password for the one ID that appears. It says logging in. I see the desktop wallpaper for maybe 8 seconds. Then under the ID it will say, "saving settings, logging off".

My specific Problem with fix posted everywhere... I dont have a bootable xp cd. I do have the upgrade non bootable xp cd. So I hooked up the bad hard drive to my laptop as a secondary device via usb and on my laptop opened up a cmd prompt. I expanded the userinit.ex_ file to E: (which is the bad hard drive). After expanding i copy pasted the new userinit.exe file to E:\windows\system32. No luck. I then looked for all the userinit files on the bad hard drive. I replaced all of them... By the way, there were numerous viruses and malware on the bad hard drive in which i cleaned before this problem began.
I have read that there is one other fix which pertains to renaming the userinit.exe file to userinitnew.exe. Then going into regedit and changing the path to the new file name. But because I cannot login to the bad hard drive, I cannot access the registry of that laptop. Ive read to connect to the registry through the good laptop then using connect remotely through the network or something like that. Which I tried. But the bad laptop or hard drive is not on the network it is only connected via usb.
With all this being said I guess I have a 2 part question...
1. Is there a way to edit the registry on an external hard drive connected via usb through my working laptop?
2. Is there a fix for the auto logoff issue without having access to the registry, recovery console, and not being able to logon in safe mode. (safemode gives me the same problem as logging in normally) Its almost as if it begins to login safemode but then changes half way through and goes back to normal login mode.
Any help? As i said... window, throwing, laptop, is next,
Thanks in advance
Liam

Ive never had to recover the admin password myself (thankfully my little brother always remember it) so i quickly googled it

I found a page that listed a couple of different options
https://petri.com/forgot_administrator_password
A couple of them are boot disks designed to crack the admin password (I think...i just quickly skimmed threw it)

If you read up on those you may be able to solve your problem

Google and download the ISO for Hiren's boot disk (Or just go here: https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ Burn it to a disk and boot off it. There are a number of useful tools, including a local user (admin, guest, etc.) properties resetter (IE Disabled/Enabled). This includes a password blanking feature.

Thats not all that helpful Mal because as previously stated, it immediately logs us off which makes it impossible to access the properties menu

After i replaced that file i talked about in my second post my laptop has worked just fine, so i would still say that's the best bet for anyone with this problem.