What is system repair?

I'm using XP Pro. When any of us logs on to a profile, the individualized desktop comes up, but that's it. Right-clicking on the desktop won't bring up the context menu, I can't get my start bar (it's on autohide, but won't respond in the other profiles anyway), etc. Basically, nothing will run. I use ctl-alt-delete to get the Task Manager and see that there is a "system idle process" using 99% of the cpu. When I log-on, I notice that Norton anti-virus is disabled. When I use Task Manager to run Norton (or anything else), the program will run for 20-30 seconds then shut-off (without an error message, justs shuts off). I'm thinking that I may have a virus, but I can't run a scan with Norton. I'm on my work computer now and can't find anything on Norton/Symantec's website that would indicate that I have a virus. Any ideas?

This question was answered on October 31, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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To recover if the operating system stops

Restart the computer and log on using an account in the Administrators group

Open Event Viewer, archive the currently logged security events (if desired), and then clear all events from the security log

Open Registry Editor and locate the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Delete and replace the CrashOnAuditFail value, using data type REG_DWORD and a value of 1

Exit Registry Editor and restart the computer

Caution

Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system You should back up any valuable data on the computer before making changes to the registry

Notes

If the registry was previously configured with CrashOnAuditFail = 1 and the security log becomes full, Windows XP will stop responding and will display the message "Audit Failed." If that happens, use the previous procedure

To start Registry Editor, click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK For more information about Registry Editor, on the Registry Editor Help menu, click Help Topics

To capture registry changes in your backup procedures, be sure to include System State data in the Backup set when you run Backup

you can also boot from the winXP CD, when prompted select repair.

About the author

Posted by christopher of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on October 31, 2004

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