Registry too small login loop win2k please help

B

Brothernod

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 29, 2001
Messages
340
Doing windows updates and installing service packs on a computer at work on Friday I ran into a problem. The updates were done so I went to restore it's normal login procedure which is to login automatically to a user account (local). The problem is that when it restarted and went to auto sign in an error came up saying something to the effect that the registry was to small and that I needed to increase the registry size and then a counter counted down till a restart of the login process.

It's stuck in this infinite loop and I have yet to figure out how to get out.

Last Good Config didn't work.
a soft reinstall didn't fix it.
Safe mode didn't fix it.

I believe i need a way to force it to let me get the login screen back so I can login as the administrator but I have no idea how to do that.

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.
 
you try a repair install? there are offline registry tools you can use to edit the registry.
 
repair install is what I meant by a soft install.

I can't get onto the computer so I don't see how a registry tool would help.

Is there anyway I can force it to login through the recovery console or something?
 
safemode didn't work, seems to be autologging in there too. I'm going in to play with it now.
 
What would I be able to do from the recovery console that would fix the problem? I'm not familiar with it's capabilities.
 
Have you tried (or are able to) login as Administrator? Is this a fresh install? You could have been hit with one of those viruses...
 
I am not able to login as anything, it defaults to a login that it says it can't load. That's the problem.

It may have a virus, judging by the actions, but i'm almost positive i had done virus checks before this started acting up and nothing was found. I honestly don't know.
 
It should not be auto logon in safemode. search google for nt password reseter. try changing the password for the account that auto logging in. i doubt it will work if a repair install failed.
 
I'm in the process of trying to change the password of the autologin account, I just have to figure out how to do it remotely or from the recovery console.
 
Changing hte password didn't fix anything :/


I think i need to find out what registry key has the autologin info and remove it.
Anyone?
 
Well problem solved.

I had a linux disk with a windows registry editor and was gonna start hacking it up as per this information http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/13/

and then i noticed the little note on the bottom that says you can bypass autologin by holding shift.

Sure enough it worked, I was able to get into admin, and then I increased the registry size (it was at 19 megs and the registry was 20 megs)

All fixed.
 
Did you tweak this before? This sounds like a typical result of a computer that has had its settings for the registry tweaked. This is why it is recommended to let Windows manage such things.
 
Nope never touched the registry size before. Windows doesn't have an automanage registry size setting far as I know (unlike Virtual Memmory) and my guess is they set it to either a percentage of the harddrive size (3 gigs) or a percentage of the ram when it was configured (either 64 megs or 192).
 
You could be right, Brother. I've had to fix other installs for this problem, but it's been a while and also had to do with other settings being changed. Good on you if you haven't bothered with registry size settings, too. I wish I knew what general symptoms caused the problem, but as far as I've seen, it has been happening in different setups.
 
I've definitely never seen it before either, but my best guess is it has to do with the size of the harddrive or ram during setup.
 
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